Ethics Topics¶

1. In recent years, I have seen more companies ask whether users want to opt-in to use strictly necessary and additional cookies when using their websites. What exactly are we opting into when we allow cookies, and are there any dangers or benefits to opting in to the necessary and unnecessary cookies?

2. Privacy concerns of databases

3. I notice that even though I always choose "ask app not to track" and disable cookies in everyone of my apps, I still see adds on the things I've searched on everywhere. Also, on some of the websites, you can accept all the cookies by one click, but in order to disable cookies you'll have to go through complicate steps which users don't normally want to go through. I'm wondering whether there's a better way of authenticating cookies that takes the user experience into consideration.

4. I wonder generally what the ethics of storing customer data and specifically data that is collected more "unknowingly". I feel like there must be some kind of database that exists that allows big tech companies to be able to keep tabs on each customer (for algorithm etc purposes) and I feel like that might not necessarily be very ethical.

5. Should the sale of personal information on the internet be allowed?

Discussion references:

• The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives California residents to right to opt-out the sale of their personal information and delete the personal information collected from them. https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
• https://globalprivacycontrol.org/

6. How do we draw the line in what we consider as "acceptable" data to be collected vs "unacceptable" data?

7. "Is there an ethical way for companies to collect and share data while also maintaining digital privacy of individual users?

8. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ethical-mining-social-media-data-research-ruwangi-fernando

9. The way cookie pop-ups hide the option to not accept has always bothered me. Accept all is usually presented as the only option. Some pop-ups will make you click a link that leads to a long list of text that you have to read to the bottom of and click through to get the option to not accept while others make you uncheck each individual permission you don't want them to have instead of the easily accessible, fast way of clicking the accept all button. It feels unethical to alter people's choices that way. Most people will choose expedience and let companies take data that, if the options were equally available, they might have chosen to deny."Is there an ethical way for companies to collect and share data while also maintaining digital privacy of individual users?