Describe four ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.

With technology advancing each day we begin to see new ways people store their data, one of the most popular ways people store data with their cell phones would be cloud storage. As it becomes easier for people to store data and personal information, there is still a concern that their information can be stolen. Misuse of other people’s information and data causes a loss of trust, is illegal, and goes against ethical practices. Many ethical issues that people come across when storing electronic information is the misuse of information and data, holding onto an individual’s information for a longer amount of time than they were supposed to, selling information to big companies as a way of “business”, and not announcing data breaches that can jeopardize an individual’s life. Most people don’t take these kinds of ethical practices into question and never even think about how their information is being used. In doing so, companies that do these unethical practices leave themselves with negative reviews and the reputation of their business. Companies do a bad job at teaching their employees the proper way to store data and need to do a better job at protecting their employee’s information as it not only affects an individual’s life, but the whole company altogether. Companies don’t teach these sorts of morals, so individuals need to know how and why their information is being used. When lending someone something that belongs to you, questions that arise are as such: when am I getting it back? For how long will you hold onto it? What is the purpose of you using it? These are the sort of questions that we need to be thinking about when we give up our information to big business companies. When our data is used or if we are using another person’s data the thought that should go behind it is, how will my data be stored? Who has access to it? And what protective measurements have gone into ensuring my data won’t be lost? Making questions like these a priority we ensure that there is trust, confidentiality, and availability of our data amongst one another. Unethical usage of another individual’s information does nothing but harm to the company and individual.