{"id":6,"date":"2017-09-13T16:31:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T23:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/?p=6"},"modified":"2017-09-13T19:59:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T02:59:55","slug":"business-ethics-the-hard-truth-of-surveillance-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/2017\/09\/13\/business-ethics-the-hard-truth-of-surveillance-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Ethics: The hard truth about surveillance capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nowadays, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, are able to display relevant advertisements tailored towards what one has been recently searching. This is all possible through companies tracking individuals’ online activities and cookies – collecting data and selling it to other organizations.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4280858.1504902409!\/cpImage\/httpImage \/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/16x9_620\/equifax-cyberattack.jpg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Equifax, a company that stores millions of individuals’ identities and credit data, has recently experienced a severe data breach,<\/a>\u00a0affecting 143 million US customers. As a result, hackers gained access to full names, Social Security numbers, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. This leak left the victims vulnerable to criminals getting their hands on classified information. Criminals may commit crimes such as identity fraud; impersonating as the victims to businesses such as banks or credit card companies.<\/p>\n

However, the data breach itself did not harm Equifax on the same scale as it did with its customers. At its core, Equifax is in the business of selling information about people; collecting data, analyzing it, then selling it to people or organizations that want information about others. For instance, bankers looking to lend money, employers looking to hire, and so on. In essence, surveillance capitalism is the backbone of the internet. Users of the web are constantly being watched and are “tracked on every commercial website<\/a>” (CNN News). Equifax is not the only company that sells data. Other data brokers that may be unknown to many, may be collecting and selling data about them as well. These companies do not need to keep their data secure, as their priority is to maximize profit, even through methods that may be considered unethical. For example, Equifax saves their money on security, which increases their overall profit. The trade-off is that data breaches like this can occur due to inadequate security. Not only did Equifax cheap out on security, the senior executives of Equifax also sold “nearly two million worth of the company’s shares<\/a>” briefly after discovering the breach. The only way to end this corruption is for the government to take action and impose regulations that force companies like Equifax to invest in security.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/334\/18495846450_1ce51ae831_b.jpg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As discussed in class one, the government should adjust to each society’s needs and in this case, the US government needs to intervene and correct this misconduct. Many lives of America are being ruined and threatened because of companies like Equifax maximizing their profit through unethical practices.<\/p>\n

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Word Count: 385<\/p>\n

Citations:<\/p>\n

Bruce, S. (2017, September 11). Don’t waste your breath complaining to Equifax about data breach. \u00a0<\/em>Retrieved from\u00a0<\/em>http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/09\/11\/opinions\/dont-complain-to-equifax-demand-government-act-opinion-schneier\/index.html<\/p>\n

Mohammed, H. (2017, September 7).\u00a0Equifax executives sold shares after the company learned of a massive hack.\u00a0<\/em>Retrieved from\u00a0http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/equifax-executives-sold-shares-after-the-company-learned-of-a-massive-hack-2017-9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nowadays, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, are able to display relevant advertisements tailored towards what one has been recently searching. This is all possible through companies tracking individuals’ online activities and cookies – collecting data and selling it to other organizations. Equifax, a company that stores millions of individuals’ identities and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50748,"featured_media":15,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50748"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/raymondhung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}