Private Data Accessibility Paper Sample

There have been allegations made against big social networking firms like Facebook over their breach in ethical business practices in the last year. Third parties use private data without the knowledge of the owner of the data. The data may be used for the wrong purpose hence creating rifts between the social media users and the management of such corporations. For example, there have been allegations that data illegally collected from Facebook users was used by Cambridge Analytical to sway the presidential vote.

Ethical Concepts

The risk of private data being used in unintended purposes brings about the lack of ethics in systematic issues such as legal and political. The social media giant did not disclose to their users that their private data could be used against them in a case such as an election. This could be avoided if the company had put in place measures to curb this threat. The moral obligation of Facebook was to shield its users from such infringement of their private data. Corporation ethical standards were put to task as the data was collected by a third party who posed a questionnaire that revealed the interests of the users whose intended purpose was for marketing (Martin and Patrick 140). The company has many advertiser’s platforms who make up a large proportion of their profits; hence the company was willing to forego the extent of access to private data as long as profits streamed into the company.

Opinion on Private Data Use

There should be freedom from unauthorized access to private data (Mai 195). This ensures that the data is used appropriately for its intended purpose. Any breach of ethics that allows third party access to private data should be taken up legally to mitigate the risks of it happening to another user. Although this can be implemented, they are still issues to deal with data ownership once a user posts his/her private data on social media sites. The companies handling private data should exercise a great deal of good business ethics to ensure the safety of the data uploaded.

Works Cited

Mai, Jens-Erik. “Big data privacy: The datafication of personal information.” The Information Society 32.3 (2016): 192-199.

Martin, Kelly D., and Patrick E. Murphy. “The role of data privacy in marketing.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 45.2 (2017): 135-155.

165.