Data Privacy in Information Technology - Free Paper Example

Introduction

Data privacy is one of the important ethics in information technology that concerns how data is handled in terms of collection, sharing with third parties, and the regulatory restrictions set by the various bodies. Ensuring data privacy for organizational customers means that the organization does not engage in a creepy collection of personal data and share it with external parties. Burch (2020) identifies a breach of data privacy as one ethical issue that has been forsaken by Zoom as it has been reported to be sharing its customers’ data with Facebook. This paper provides a detailed summary and analysis of how zoom has violated the data privacy ethical principle.

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Social Media

Zoom, one of the social media platforms that provide video conferencing services, has been on the limelight for violating data privacy by illegally sharing user information with Facebook and another social media platform. Zoom is one of the dominant companies, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been characterized by lockdowns and limited physical interactions hence the need to conduct meetings online. Zoom has therefore been sued for failure to safeguard customers' personal information for the many users of the software application.

Ethical Breach

The ethical breach has mainly occurred during installation or opening the app to use it. Zoom Company collects the personal data of the customers and shares it with Facebook without proper authorization from the account owners. Some of the data sent to Facebook includes that for users who did not even have Facebook accounts (Burch, 2020). Failure to notify the users on data sharing, therefore, promotes privacy invasion for the millions of clients, a factor that may lead to data misuse. The majority of zoom users might not understand that they may be providing information to another service without their consent when they use the app.

Zoom initially used the Facebook SDK to integrate the "login with Facebook" feature for efficient access to the app. However, the SDK ended up collecting device information such as the version and type of the operating systems, time zone, model, processor cores, screen size, and storage capacity. Users of Zoom have entrusted the company to connect them with different people but not to share it with third parties; hence the company ought to have known that the security protocols were insufficient and the risk of data disclosure was high. Therefore, zoom had failed to institute strong security practices and procedures to protect the personal information of the app users.

Unlawful Business Practices

The article demonstrates an example of how social media are likely to engage in unfair and unlawful business practices by sharing unauthorized data. Data sharing with third parties without the customers' consent compromise their security and privacy. Such information may land to the wrong hands, such as hackers who are likely to be a risk to the users by tracking or stealing personal information for malicious use.

No personal data should be shared without the owner's consent as such practice violates information security and privacy. Therefore, social media companies need to ensure that data provided by the users during installation or app opening is confidential and only used by the company. Such companies need to ensure data independence such that no data is exposed to external parties whose intention on the data is not known.

Conclusion

In conclusion, online platforms that collect customers' data should have clear privacy policies to guarantee data security and privacy. Moreover, there is a need for such firms to continually update their security practices and procedures to minimize any possibilities of data leaking to third parties and to spot potential hackers.

Reference

Burch, S. (2020, March 31). Zoom accused of illegally sharing data with Facebook in a new lawsuit. TheWrap.
https://www.thewrap.com/zoom-accused-of-illegally-sharing-personal-data-with-facebook-in-new-lawsuit/.