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Bradley Smith

ENG 1201

Professor Flores

24 March 2019

Privacy Ethics in Information Technology

Trying to determine what to eat with a group of friends can be one of the most difficult

decisions to agree on. One person wants to get Chinese, another wants to order pizza and so on.

Some friends and I were on our way home from a soccer game excited to sit back, eat some good

food and put on a good movie. Coming to an agreement on the food was causing to be a little

more problematic then I had anticipated but eventually after some discussion we had decided to

just make it easy and order some pizza. Going home later that night I had opened up social media

platform, Instagram, on my phone and made a frightening discovery that seems to be taking the

general public by storm recently. An ad had popped up on my feed as I was scrolling through the

app for a deal on some Papa John’s pizza; the same pizza place we had ordered our food from a

few hours ago.

After getting home and making this discovery I had a lot of questions going on in my

head as far as how in the world that happens. There is no way that it could be a coincidence.

How could they possibly know that we had talked about and ordered pizza it’s not like I used my

phone to call and place the order or pay. Many people nowadays have the same questions and

issues as things such as that can pop up relating to something you may have talked about or

googled or whatever the case may be. This is a scary world we live in as the power of

information rules it. I am fascinated to determine how things such as this happen and how
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companies can get their hands onto personal information or what would be considered ethical in

relation to how they do so and what methods to choose to utilize in information gathering.

I think that this can be a very scary subject to discuss and it can bring a lot of interesting

research along with it. What are the benefits of these practices and how are they considered legal

when so many people react negatively to them. The general consensus I get from instances such

as the one with my friend is that it scares people and violates their privacy; which I tend to agree

with. Maybe the reasons are for purposes that myself and others just do not understand or there

are benefits that outweigh the concern for invasions of privacy.

I am interested to get down to the bottom of determining the fine lines between what is

considered legal, ethical, etc. and the perception about such practices as well as how they violate

privacy rights. What are the implications of practices such as data mining, spywares and

workplace monitoring and how do they effect employee/employer relations?