Four ethical Issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.
The first ethical issue is ensuring the privacy of the individual. In today’s world, anyone with a bank account has sensitive personal information stored electronically. Anyone who visits a hospital has an electronic health record stored. Privacy means ensuring that only those who need to see this information have access to it. In a healthcare context, a practitioner uses a patient’s sensitive personal information when doing their job. Sharing this patient’s name and information with a co-worker over lunch, or at home with a spouse, would represent a breach in privacy and an ethical shortcoming.
Another ethical issue is keeping this information secure. Sensitive information is constantly the target of cybercriminals who seek to access it for personal gain. A bank might store the social-security numbers of their customers who have loans with them. Keeping this data safe from cybercriminals is imperative. A person entrusting a bank with their social-security number is implicitly trusting that the bank will not leave this information vulnerable to exploitation.
Accuracy is another important consideration when an institution is storing electronic information. If a hospital inputs inaccurate information into a patient’s healthcare record, this can result in suboptimal treatment going forward. If an employee at a bank is saving an email on file for future correspondence with a customer, they need to make sure they enter this information accurately. Failure to do so can result in the customer missing important messages about their account, or their information accidentally being sent to someone else.
Finally, ensuring transparency is an important ethical issue when it comes to storing electronic information. Customers and patients are individuals with specific preferences when it comes to their privacy. If a business plans to store information electronically about a customer, the customer needs to be informed. A banker might ask questions about private information when assessing a customer’s loan qualifications. It might not be obvious to the customer that this information is going to be stored electronically at the bank. Clearly communicating that to the customer is an ethical must.
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