Activity Instructions
Pretend your company is considering selling customer data gained through their Facebook page to a 3rd party as a way to increase revenue. However, the company has a written commitment to privacy on its Facebook page that reads:
"We will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period."
Consider Hooker's ethical tests (or another reputable ethical framework that you uncover in your research) as you create a well-organized paper that addresses the situation above. In your paper, answer the following questions:
- What other information or reference points would help you to make an appropriate appraisal of the ethical nature of the situation?
- Would the company be in ethical violation of the policy if the data was aggregated, stripped of personal data, and then legally sold?
- What if the company did not actually sell the data but instead shared (allowed use of) it in exchange for a service such as mining of that data?
- What if one of the company's other social media sites omitted a mention of data sharing in its privacy policy and there is a single login for all company sites and the data among them was shared with corporate headquarters? Could that information ethically be sold?
- If leadership decided to change their policy, what data would it be ethically responsible in sharing?
Ensure that you write a well-organized, well-supported, flowing paper that addresses the issue. Do not simply list these questions and answer them. You need to have an introduction, conclusion, and various subheadings in between.
Hooker, J. (2011). Business ethics as rational choice. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Prentice Hall.