When talking about business ethical issues, some serious business fraud which lead to  customers’ physical and considerable loss come into our minds. However, would the confidential insecurity resulting from a business activity fall into the concerns of business ethics? I definitely say yes.

Using Health Apps on the smartphone can make our life as active and healthy as we want it to be. Yet, the inconvenient side comes when confidential health information can be publicly accessed due to the lack of privacy management of the Apps network.  A research financed by the California Consumer Protection Foundation discovered that “Only 13 percent of free apps, and 10 percent of paid apps, encrypted all data connections between the app and the developer’s Web site.” (Carrns, Ann. “Free Apps for Nearly Every Health Problem, but What About Privacy?”.  “The New York Times”. September 11, 2013.)

Unlike a health clinic where the medical information is legally protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, there are not legalized policies on privacy protection for Health Apps. It is basically up to the network company to decide on how much capital and finances they would put on securing personal information for their users/customers.  If their social responsibilities are not priorly or even solely on “increasing their profits” (as Milton Friedman suggested in his essay “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”), some important customers’ rights such as medical privacy on Health Apps ought to be considered seriously.  However, before the Apps business securely manage their online privacy motivated by business ethical responsibilities, as customers we better go with the paid credible Health Apps for our own interests.