Data Mining Benefits and Drawbacks
Introduction
In a world where computers are becoming as essential to daily life as the cars we drive or the telephones we use to communicate, it is difficult to find a person who doesn’t have some particular use for computers. Computers have become the information stores of the world. If you take a moment to think about all the kinds of information a person can and does hold on their computer it is staggering. I myself have all the passwords to my email and bank accounts, the history of every web page I’ve visited in the last 3 weeks, my credit card numbers, the complete history of all my banking transactions for the last three years stored on my computer. Additionally, think about all the information a person gives up to obtain various services from internet websites; name, address, date of birth, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, in some cases even driver’s license number and social security number.
The Issue Identified
Data mining is the process of seeking out and compiling all the information running rampant on the internet to allow companies to make business decisions and improve their customer service. Data mining seems to be mostly harmless. It is just gathering all the information people have already surrendered to the internet. A managed health care organization uses data mining to “reach out to consumers and answer questions they might not realize they have.”1 The US government uses data mining to increase security, Northwest airlines “gave information to the federal government for an air-security project after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The airline said it participated in the NASA program to help the government's search for technology to improve avi...
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Spanbauer, Scott “DIY net defence: go online without a firewall and you're asking for trouble. Why risk it? There are lots of products--including free software--out there that can help. Here's how to set one up.” Australian PC World (April 2004 p35(4)):
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Introduction to Ethics from the Engineering Handbook
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The information age is the age we live in today, and with the information age comes an age of ethics. When we deal with the new technologies introduced every day, we need to decide what we must consider ethical and unethical. We must consider all factors so that the use of the information readily available to many persons is not abused. "Information technology will be the most fundamental area of ethical concern for business in the next decade" (Houston 2). The most widely used tool of the information age is the computer, whether it be a PC or a network of computer systems. As we enter the information age the newness and power of information technologies tests the ethics of the average person, not just the criminal and causes thousands of computer crimes to be committed daily. The most common computer crime committed daily, some aware and many not, is the illegal sharing of computer software. Software is any of the programs used in operating a digital computer, as input and output programs, as defined by Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary. When you purchase computer software, you purchase it with the understanding that it will be for use on a single computer, once installed on that system, it is not to be loaded on any other computer. However many people are not aware of this understanding, and many load a program on a couple of computers or on a whole network of computer systems not aware that they are committing a crime.
As of September 2003, there were approximately 70 million Americans or about 62 percent of the American population had at least one home computer. Another statistic is that about 55% of people also have internet on there home computers. In everyday life it is important for a person to have good ethics; this is also true about computer usage. Due to the fact that more then half of the American population owns computers, computer ethics are a growing concern in a rapidly changing society. Computer ethics can be broken down in to many topics including piracy, hacking, viruses, spam, phishing, and responsibility of use of software, cyber porn, and invasion of privacy and the use of the computer in the work place. Also there are many issues both moral and professional that a person who uses a computer might face.