1. Are you in favor of the enactment and enforcement of laws that will regulate and control the use of computer technology? Why or why not? Defend your answer.
Yes, I’m in favor of the enactment and enforcement of laws that will regulate and control the use of computer technology. Using computer technology it will give the user too much benefits. In a way that we can use it for faster transaction, to have a communication, to advertise, to come up with a new knowledge, to discover new things like researching, to gain money, to have online study and to have a job. But computer technology could harm as too, if there is no law that will control the use of computer technology. It can damage one’s property, one’s reputation and many other else. Computer technology can be used to a war. Like Mr. Isagani Osio said, it can launch missiles to annihilate human lives and we don’t want this to happen. Country to country can declare war using computer technology. Sometimes being in a computer world (internet) is not a private anymore because there are too many hackers that could easily destabilize your work or data. If there is no law controlling the use of computer technology many users will violate the law. Many cases of computer crimes will be unresolved. And in my opinion I will not use the computer technology anymore because I don’t trust it. It will just give me pain.
2. If you were to decide the case of Landmark Hacking, what will be your judgment? Support your answer.
Leilani Garcia is not guilty. Impact she is authorized to access the computer systems of Thames International Business School that was provided by Cesar Maňalac. She has a password. I ‘am in favor that Maňalac is just using her for his own benefit or to cover up with his case. In this case intrusion allegedly happened last December 17,24,25,31, 2000 and January 1, 2001. My question is that why Cesar Maňalac IT support Chief of Thames did not notice that earlier and did not file administrative case against her when she was still working with the company? Miss Garcia is a school system supervisor from January 29, 2000 until her resignation in March 23, 2001. As a supervisor she knows what is done or practices in that company. If Miss Garcia is guilty about this and she is the only one who’s doing it, the company must issue a violation against Garcia. In this case the company does not comply with the Standard Operating Procedures that ones an employee violate procedures in that company she will be punish and charge. There is a sanction. I just think that ones you are a member of one orgnization it is your privilege to access their account.
I'm Rea P. San Diego from the Philippines. I'm so happy that I'm back doing and posting shout out, ideas, thoughts, emotions and others to my blog. It's been 7 years not doing this post. My first time doing this is when I'm studying Information System because I need this in my subject for a grade but now I need blog to inspire me and others as well. To post things..
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Saq12: Computer Crimes
Saq12: Computer Crimes
1.From the cases summarized above, explain what constitutes a computer crime.
For me, ones they abuse their right as a user, access files which he/she is not allowed to access and damage ones file so as he/she stored data, retrieve or intercept, defraud, harm, alter data or computer software, delete files from the origin then it constitutes a computer crime. If the action affects many users so as to incur stolen services, money, property and ones right it will also constitute computer crimes. Ones a user begun to be selfish, their mind is full of evil thoughts and think only their own benefits so us to revenge and to gain money then it will be considered a crime. In short if one user is affected by other users’ action and damage things, then it will constitute a computer crime because it will violate the law in the land.
2. Discuss at least three other examples of computer crimes.
Child Pornography
Through the use of spam email nude photos can be sent trough attachment and transferred it to the innocent victims without knowing who send it. It degrade one’s personality ones it is published in the internet. Many websites appear to contain child pornography and even adult pornography. Both known and unknown women are abused. They are published in nude photos even it is altered. I know women are degraded in this situation, they been harassed, but I know they can handle the situation as far as I’m concern. Now we will talk about child pornography or Child Erotica” (i.e. children photographed nude or partially nude posed in a manner that does not meet the criteria for sexual conduct.) Child Erotica is definitely illegal and very unethical. They are very innocent to be published in the internet.
Child pornography as “any image depicting a minor engaged in sexual conduct.” Sexual conduct is defined as “actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, or sadomasochistic abuse; actual lewd exhibition of the genitals; actual physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if such person is a female, breast with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of either party; or any act or conduct which constitutes sexual battery or simulates that sexual battery is being or will be committed.” http://www.flsenate.gov
The children are innocent to be published in the internet. Do they have future ones they are published in nude photos? I doubt it, because I think they will suffer a lot of pain. They will be in traumatic experience, and so it’s too hard to forget what is past.
Cyberstalking
Cyberstalking as "engaging in a course of conduct to communicate, or to cause to be communicated, words, images, or language by or through the use of electronic mail or electronic communication, directed at a specific person, causing substantial emotional distress to that person and serving no legitimate purpose. This is used for blackmail or entrapment. Stalking of any kind creates serious danger and trauma for its victims. Frequently, stalking or cyberstalking takes place as part of a continuum of other crimes of sexual violence or interpersonal violence. Stalking is used to gain information about a victim that gives the perpetrator a sense of power and helps the perpetrator plan opportunities to commit other assaults. Stalking is also used by perpetrators to harass and intimidate victims. Often stalking precedes kidnapping, homicide or sexual battery, so intervention and safety planning are essential for stalking victims.
Phishing
Phishing is the distribution of 'spoofed' e-mail messages with return addresses, links, and branding which appear to come from banks, insurance agencies, retailers, credit card companies, and other legitimate businesses but it is just a faked one. Many are deceived because at first it is just like an original one. “Parang Totoo”. That’s why some have trust to do these things. But they don’t know it is a strategy to steal. Phishing is done to get the things, money and information they needed to a particular user or victim. These fraudulent messages are designed to trick the recipients into disclosing personal information authentication data such as account usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and home addresses. Most of these e-mails look “official,” and as a result, recipients often respond to them, resulting in financial losses, identity theft, and other fraudulent activity.
1.From the cases summarized above, explain what constitutes a computer crime.
For me, ones they abuse their right as a user, access files which he/she is not allowed to access and damage ones file so as he/she stored data, retrieve or intercept, defraud, harm, alter data or computer software, delete files from the origin then it constitutes a computer crime. If the action affects many users so as to incur stolen services, money, property and ones right it will also constitute computer crimes. Ones a user begun to be selfish, their mind is full of evil thoughts and think only their own benefits so us to revenge and to gain money then it will be considered a crime. In short if one user is affected by other users’ action and damage things, then it will constitute a computer crime because it will violate the law in the land.
2. Discuss at least three other examples of computer crimes.
Child Pornography
Through the use of spam email nude photos can be sent trough attachment and transferred it to the innocent victims without knowing who send it. It degrade one’s personality ones it is published in the internet. Many websites appear to contain child pornography and even adult pornography. Both known and unknown women are abused. They are published in nude photos even it is altered. I know women are degraded in this situation, they been harassed, but I know they can handle the situation as far as I’m concern. Now we will talk about child pornography or Child Erotica” (i.e. children photographed nude or partially nude posed in a manner that does not meet the criteria for sexual conduct.) Child Erotica is definitely illegal and very unethical. They are very innocent to be published in the internet.
Child pornography as “any image depicting a minor engaged in sexual conduct.” Sexual conduct is defined as “actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, or sadomasochistic abuse; actual lewd exhibition of the genitals; actual physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or, if such person is a female, breast with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of either party; or any act or conduct which constitutes sexual battery or simulates that sexual battery is being or will be committed.” http://www.flsenate.gov
The children are innocent to be published in the internet. Do they have future ones they are published in nude photos? I doubt it, because I think they will suffer a lot of pain. They will be in traumatic experience, and so it’s too hard to forget what is past.
Cyberstalking
Cyberstalking as "engaging in a course of conduct to communicate, or to cause to be communicated, words, images, or language by or through the use of electronic mail or electronic communication, directed at a specific person, causing substantial emotional distress to that person and serving no legitimate purpose. This is used for blackmail or entrapment. Stalking of any kind creates serious danger and trauma for its victims. Frequently, stalking or cyberstalking takes place as part of a continuum of other crimes of sexual violence or interpersonal violence. Stalking is used to gain information about a victim that gives the perpetrator a sense of power and helps the perpetrator plan opportunities to commit other assaults. Stalking is also used by perpetrators to harass and intimidate victims. Often stalking precedes kidnapping, homicide or sexual battery, so intervention and safety planning are essential for stalking victims.
Phishing
Phishing is the distribution of 'spoofed' e-mail messages with return addresses, links, and branding which appear to come from banks, insurance agencies, retailers, credit card companies, and other legitimate businesses but it is just a faked one. Many are deceived because at first it is just like an original one. “Parang Totoo”. That’s why some have trust to do these things. But they don’t know it is a strategy to steal. Phishing is done to get the things, money and information they needed to a particular user or victim. These fraudulent messages are designed to trick the recipients into disclosing personal information authentication data such as account usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and home addresses. Most of these e-mails look “official,” and as a result, recipients often respond to them, resulting in financial losses, identity theft, and other fraudulent activity.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Saq 11: Intellectual Property Rights
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time. In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property is a form of legal entitlement which allows its holder to control the use of certain intangible ideas and expressions. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that once established, such entitlements are generally treated by courts, especially in common law jurisdictions, as if they were tangible property. The most common forms of intellectual property include patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Common types of Intellectual Property
•A copyright is a form of intellectual property that grants its holder the sole legal right to copy their works of original expression, such as a literary work, movie, musical work or sound recording, painting, computer program, or industrial design, for a defined period of time. Typically, works must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for a copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time.
Rights of copyright holder
A copyright holder typically has exclusive rights:
•to make and sell copies of the work (including, typically, electronic copies)
•to import or export the work
•to make derivative works
•to publicly perform/display the work
•to sell or assign these rights to others
•Patents give the holder an exclusive right to prevent third parties from commercially exploiting an invention for a certain period, typically 20 years from the filing date of a patent application. The term "patent" originates from the Latin word patere which means to lay open (to public inspection) and the term letters patent, which originally denoted royal decrees granting exclusive rights to certain individuals or businesses.
•Trademarks are distinctive names, phrases or marks used to identify products to consumers. Trademarks, which are almost always only enforceable against competitors in the same product market, and only against certain limited commercial uses.
A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#fn_styling) is conventionally a distinctive sign of some kind, whether that sign comprises a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, picture, styling or a combination of one or more of these elements. A trademark is used by a business to identify itself and its products or services to consumers, and to set itself and its products or services apart from other businesses. A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and in particular, a type of industrial property.
•Case of Whelan vs. Jaslow
The decision of the court is right and it must be in favor of Jaslow, although Ms. Whelan used different programming language. In this situation Ms. Whelan has a motive to infringe and to copy the structure, sequence and organization of Jaslow because she spend too much time to study Jaslow Dental Lab program for modification, which makes her action unethical. There’s no originality. It’s confusing why it’s the same and as far as I know, different companies have different programs too. I doubt that both companies have the same idea regarding the design, structure, sequence and organization of the program. Infact, my question is that what is her reason why she study it? For further review or to gain personal gratification. I know Ms. Whelan has a good intention, to do the best that she could than her competitors. That’s why she study and made a new version of that program, and use it for new innovation, to be more advance than Jaslow Dental Lab, but her action is unethical because it infringe ones intellectual property.
•Case of Computer Associates vs. Altai
Actually I don’t believe the court decision in favor of Altai. Since the ex-programmer copied 30% of the code similar to the program of Computer Associates, still there is an infringement of intellectual property here. Who knows, maybe Altai give the program of the Computer associates to the ex-programmer to study it and make some modification, improved it and do the best. And who knows, the ex-programmer found out that there are too many loop holes in the program of Computer associates that’s why he/she revised it. That’s the first version of Altai program. Altai know that they will violate intellectual property in that particular time because as a strategy they wrote a second version of that program using programmers not familiar with computer associates program. That’s a good strategy, to fool the court that there is no infringement done. I think they won in this battle. Program must have originality. If I’m not mistaken it is there weapon to cover up what they did in the 1st version of their program, that’s why they wrote a second version of it. I’m not in favor of the court decision.
•Case of Apple vs. Microsoft
I am really confused about Copyright. I think there is no clear procedures, guidelines or basis on how to judge this particular cases in terms of graphical user interface. Since anybody can do the same graphical design I agreed with the court. I agreed with Bryan Ceniza in his car example. Of course all the car and jeep are the same. The maker of that car or jeep cannot be sued by another maker, that he/she infringe the design of it because all cars are the same but they have different accessories and others. I think originality in the case of graphical user interface (GUI) is not important.
•Case of Lotus vs. Paperback Software, Mosaic Software and Borland
There is no infringement of Intellectual Property in the case of Paperback Software, Mosaic Software and Borland for me, because there is no copying of codes. They are all original and authenticated. I just think that Lotus sued them because they want to gain money. They will use it for companies gratification.
Intellectual property rights are the rights given to persons over the creations of their minds. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time. In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property is a form of legal entitlement which allows its holder to control the use of certain intangible ideas and expressions. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that once established, such entitlements are generally treated by courts, especially in common law jurisdictions, as if they were tangible property. The most common forms of intellectual property include patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Common types of Intellectual Property
•A copyright is a form of intellectual property that grants its holder the sole legal right to copy their works of original expression, such as a literary work, movie, musical work or sound recording, painting, computer program, or industrial design, for a defined period of time. Typically, works must meet minimal standards of originality in order to qualify for a copyright, and the copyright expires after a set period of time.
Rights of copyright holder
A copyright holder typically has exclusive rights:
•to make and sell copies of the work (including, typically, electronic copies)
•to import or export the work
•to make derivative works
•to publicly perform/display the work
•to sell or assign these rights to others
•Patents give the holder an exclusive right to prevent third parties from commercially exploiting an invention for a certain period, typically 20 years from the filing date of a patent application. The term "patent" originates from the Latin word patere which means to lay open (to public inspection) and the term letters patent, which originally denoted royal decrees granting exclusive rights to certain individuals or businesses.
•Trademarks are distinctive names, phrases or marks used to identify products to consumers. Trademarks, which are almost always only enforceable against competitors in the same product market, and only against certain limited commercial uses.
A trademark (Commonwealth English: trade mark)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#fn_styling) is conventionally a distinctive sign of some kind, whether that sign comprises a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, picture, styling or a combination of one or more of these elements. A trademark is used by a business to identify itself and its products or services to consumers, and to set itself and its products or services apart from other businesses. A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and in particular, a type of industrial property.
•Case of Whelan vs. Jaslow
The decision of the court is right and it must be in favor of Jaslow, although Ms. Whelan used different programming language. In this situation Ms. Whelan has a motive to infringe and to copy the structure, sequence and organization of Jaslow because she spend too much time to study Jaslow Dental Lab program for modification, which makes her action unethical. There’s no originality. It’s confusing why it’s the same and as far as I know, different companies have different programs too. I doubt that both companies have the same idea regarding the design, structure, sequence and organization of the program. Infact, my question is that what is her reason why she study it? For further review or to gain personal gratification. I know Ms. Whelan has a good intention, to do the best that she could than her competitors. That’s why she study and made a new version of that program, and use it for new innovation, to be more advance than Jaslow Dental Lab, but her action is unethical because it infringe ones intellectual property.
•Case of Computer Associates vs. Altai
Actually I don’t believe the court decision in favor of Altai. Since the ex-programmer copied 30% of the code similar to the program of Computer Associates, still there is an infringement of intellectual property here. Who knows, maybe Altai give the program of the Computer associates to the ex-programmer to study it and make some modification, improved it and do the best. And who knows, the ex-programmer found out that there are too many loop holes in the program of Computer associates that’s why he/she revised it. That’s the first version of Altai program. Altai know that they will violate intellectual property in that particular time because as a strategy they wrote a second version of that program using programmers not familiar with computer associates program. That’s a good strategy, to fool the court that there is no infringement done. I think they won in this battle. Program must have originality. If I’m not mistaken it is there weapon to cover up what they did in the 1st version of their program, that’s why they wrote a second version of it. I’m not in favor of the court decision.
•Case of Apple vs. Microsoft
I am really confused about Copyright. I think there is no clear procedures, guidelines or basis on how to judge this particular cases in terms of graphical user interface. Since anybody can do the same graphical design I agreed with the court. I agreed with Bryan Ceniza in his car example. Of course all the car and jeep are the same. The maker of that car or jeep cannot be sued by another maker, that he/she infringe the design of it because all cars are the same but they have different accessories and others. I think originality in the case of graphical user interface (GUI) is not important.
•Case of Lotus vs. Paperback Software, Mosaic Software and Borland
There is no infringement of Intellectual Property in the case of Paperback Software, Mosaic Software and Borland for me, because there is no copying of codes. They are all original and authenticated. I just think that Lotus sued them because they want to gain money. They will use it for companies gratification.
Friday, February 25, 2005
SAQ10: Free Speech Issues
Pornography (from Greek πορνογραφια pornographia — literally writing about or drawings of harlots) is the representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but (according to some) distinct from, erotica. Pornography may use any of a variety of media — written and spoken text, photos, sculpture, drawings, moving images (including animation), and sound such as heavy breathing. Pornographic films combine moving images, spoken erotic text and/or other erotic sounds, while magazines often combine photos and written text. Novels and short stories provide written text, sometimes with illustrations. In addition to media, a live performance may also be called pornographic.In its original meaning, pornography was literally "writing about prostitutes", from the classical Greek roots πορνη and γραφειν. It was, however, a made-up word coined in England about 1850 that had a spurious air of age and scholarship about it. There is no evidence that anyone at that time, or earlier, was writing about prostitutes per se except as they figured as characters in written erotica of that epoch. It quickly came to mean writing about anything sexual, especially in a base manner, when the creation, presentation, or consumption of the material was for sexual stimulation. The term now refers to sexually related material of all kinds, both written and graphical.
Ethical Relativism
There are two distinct forms of moral relativism. The first is individual relativism, which holds that individual people create their own moral standards. As a human being we have our own belief, we have our own standards. The second is cultural relativism which maintains that morality is grounded in the approval of one’s society – and not simply in the preferences of individual people. Although we have individual differences, different cultural heritage, different prevailing social norms and different religious affiliation we must considered the whole society.
We have our own standards regarding pornography. For me pornography is a big No, because many are affected. Not just the women itself but the children and the youth. Pornography is a sin, it is morally wrong. It violates the law of God. Philippines is a Christian country, Pilipino strongly believed that pornography is bad under all circumstances but even we believe it, many of the Pilipino supported this event like accessing the website of it, publishing nude photos and scandals which is unethical. Nude photos of women bring happiness to the men, but disgrace to a woman. Publishing nude photos brings money, they gain profit from it. Some computer café hook nude photos because of money even it is morally wrong because they don’t want to be poor and they don’t want their family to starve to death. Even it’s against to their faith they engage with it, although there are laws prohibiting pornography. Women must be respected not to be abused. If some countries considered it decent and morally good, and nudity of the human body is just an art, I just think that Noah’s day will be repeated. Only few men, women and youth will be inside the ark, but most will be killed by the floods because of immorality. I don’t believe ethical relativism in this case because all the people in the world must be considered.
Ethical Absolutism
I believe ethical absolutism in the case of pornography, that all the actions done in this case is morally wrong under all circumstances, that pornography is considered immoral, that there should be fixed or rigid factors in evaluating such actions. If pornography is morally wrong, then the same should be so in all such incidents. Pornography can’t be considered good in one case and bad in another case. Ones’ an action damage ones reputation, ones right and it is malicious act, then it will be considered morally wrong no matter what the circumstances is. Impact the law of the Bible will agreed on ethical relativism because pornography is really bad and it is a sin against God.
Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism
Ethical Altruism in the case of pornography is a pure mask self interest of the publisher; there is no desire to promote the good of others. And besides they promote immorality in the sight of God. Pornography is degrading women reputation. Who will benefit from it? Of course the Publisher and individual users who has self interest. They can use it for flesh or for arousal, black mail, and revenge and gain personal profit; to buy anything they want to. Individual have the capacity to think and discern what is right and wrong but then because of “human needs” or “human lust of the flesh” they did not think. They can’t control their action, that’s why they are doing it to satisfy their needs even they will abused someone’s reputation. I believe Mortiz Schlick of Vienna that “All choices, altruistic ones considered, are determined by the immediate pleasure felt by the person doing it. People have the tendency to lie about their motives in doing certain action or things, in reality they are self seeking”. They are all selfish. In ethical egoism what harms, the whole harms one. Pornography harms others reputation that’s why whatever we post must be taken into account. In the case of Pornography there is no freedom of expression, we don’t have the freedom to publish nude photos because it degrade ones personality and we must be responsible for that.
John Stuart Mills Utilitarianism
I don’t believe this finalist theory in the case of pornography. I really doubt that those actions that bring happiness are considered morally right while those actions that inhibit happiness is morally wrong. I know most of men are happy seeing nude photos of women in the internet which is morally wrong for me. But in this theory if we inhibit the happiness of a publisher or user who published nude photos it will be morally wrong. I don’t believe it; since publishing nude photos in the internet is a sin, it will not make me happy. It will bring us doom and we will be out in the sight of God. Happiness in pornography will be considered a yardstick of immorality. It’s alright to be happy if you helped for no reasons, if you helped without exchange, if you don’t degrade ones opinion, if you respect ones right that is the true happiness. But if you will degrade and abused one I don’t think its happiness, I called it self satisfaction and self interest. I just think we need to find the true happiness, the true happiness that God alone can give.
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperatives
I believe Immanuel Kant that only good will be considered good. Pornography is bad under all circumstances. “The acts is good not because of certain consequences that occur on its performances or on the basis of its end result, but because of the willing, that accompanies the act”. In the case of pornography the user who published nude photos has no good intention, that’s why his action is really bad under all circumstances. The intention of the publisher of the nude photos is to gain profit from it, although they know that it will destroy the soul of every human being. Pornography is not an art, but it is a lust of the flesh. It will boost the needs of a man; many are rape because of pornography in the net. I don’t see good things that it will bring to the society. I know that every human being is able to discern and decide whether to obey certain set of laws or not. But because of the free will given to us by God, we choose always the bad things and acted upon, which we think it make us happy although it’s against the law in the land and the law of God. Pornography can’t be considered good; the act of browsing the web of it is really bad. It’s a temptation browsing the net.
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Since pornography is a human action, I don’t see moral virtue in pornography or intellectual virtue. It is not righteous, it is not fair and it is not just. Pornography damages the lives of many young people. Yes, human actions in computing are subject to evaluation through certain norms of ethical value. But in the case of pornography the action is lewd, unethical and immoral. In any aspect or situation pornography is bad under all circumstances. Publishing nude photos is just a body pleasure, to gain short time of happiness. We the users of the World Wide Web must discern what is right and garbage what is wrong, but there is no sense if what we discern right is not acted upon. Christian countries like Philippines knows that pornography is bad under all circumstances, we set our mind not to engage with this, but when the body pleasure comes, most of us can’t resist the temptation because it gives happiness to our eyes. Pornography is a sin and doing this is evil. We don’t want to be trap by evil things, and as abiding citizen we must not be engage to this. Temperance is a virtue that we must have as a user. With this virtue, we will be able to regulate our appetite with respect to what would preserve our physical well being. In that case we will not patronize or reproduce pornography.
If I were granted indefinite and unrestricted access to the internet, I will not be interested to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned because I’m not fond of chatting and at the same time I’m just wasting my time. I don’t really chat to a stranger whom I don’t really know, besides I’m not ready to hear negative criticism and negative feedbacks regarding my opinion because I’m very emotional person. Yes, we have the freedom to express what is in our hearts and mind and that’s 90% correct, we must respect all the opinion of others and we are just honest with our self. But this freedom give us doom, freedom is only for those abiding citizen and know what is good and bad. Freedom is for those people who respect ones personality, that no one will be hurt and affected. But then, many abused their freedom of expression so as to published nude photos in the internet, published hate speeches and many more. You see if there is no barrier, many will be affected. But then it’s up to us if we will be affected on the issue published in the chat room, it’s really up to us. But the really problem in freedom to express what is inside your heart is the children and youth that will be affected. It’s alright if the entire oldies are affected, because they can resist and deny things that will be bad in their sight, but if it is a child or a youth then it will ruin their lives. I will say that anything to be published in the internet must be ethical, so as to have freedom of expression. Nevertheless, it’s alright for me if I join a chat group that will give me new knowledge and express what my opinion is, but not to the extent that one will be hurt because of hate speeches, and talking sex in the chat room which is “Yak, Kadiri at Bastos”. Pornography, combines images, spoken erotic text and/or other erotic sounds which is a sex crime, violating the law of God and the law in the land. Sex is sacred and it must be done secretly by married couple only. Publishing photos of a naked woman even it is altered is a malicious act. Most men arouse whenever they see nude photos in the internet, they are really amazed. (Oh Eve, your so beautiful). As a user we have the privilege to access the internet but we don’t have the rights to go beyond what is expected. We have given a privilege, don’t try to abuse it. If the topic of the chat group is nasty things like sex or nude photos of a woman or man, then I don’t want to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned. Freedom of expression for me is only for those ethical people in the entire world; know that everything he/she published will not affect ones soul neither could not hurt ones opinion, ones belief and others. Also freedom of expression could not be used just to gain profit or personal interest from others. We can speak freely what is in our hearts but we need strategies, good approaches so that no one will be offended. If ever we hate somebody else, we talk to them personally or email them with your opinion, not to the extent that all users of the World Wide Web will read the hate speeches you wrote, because it degrades ones personality. Publishing nude photos and sex scandals in the internet is too ridiculous and very unethical. The users who do things like this are “maniac and selfish”. If freedom of expressions includes pornography and sex scandals, hate speeches and the like, then I will not be interested to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned because talking nasty things is very unethical and violate the Law of God. Pornography is a sin, so publishing nude photos in the internet is a sinful act.
Ethical Relativism
There are two distinct forms of moral relativism. The first is individual relativism, which holds that individual people create their own moral standards. As a human being we have our own belief, we have our own standards. The second is cultural relativism which maintains that morality is grounded in the approval of one’s society – and not simply in the preferences of individual people. Although we have individual differences, different cultural heritage, different prevailing social norms and different religious affiliation we must considered the whole society.
We have our own standards regarding pornography. For me pornography is a big No, because many are affected. Not just the women itself but the children and the youth. Pornography is a sin, it is morally wrong. It violates the law of God. Philippines is a Christian country, Pilipino strongly believed that pornography is bad under all circumstances but even we believe it, many of the Pilipino supported this event like accessing the website of it, publishing nude photos and scandals which is unethical. Nude photos of women bring happiness to the men, but disgrace to a woman. Publishing nude photos brings money, they gain profit from it. Some computer café hook nude photos because of money even it is morally wrong because they don’t want to be poor and they don’t want their family to starve to death. Even it’s against to their faith they engage with it, although there are laws prohibiting pornography. Women must be respected not to be abused. If some countries considered it decent and morally good, and nudity of the human body is just an art, I just think that Noah’s day will be repeated. Only few men, women and youth will be inside the ark, but most will be killed by the floods because of immorality. I don’t believe ethical relativism in this case because all the people in the world must be considered.
Ethical Absolutism
I believe ethical absolutism in the case of pornography, that all the actions done in this case is morally wrong under all circumstances, that pornography is considered immoral, that there should be fixed or rigid factors in evaluating such actions. If pornography is morally wrong, then the same should be so in all such incidents. Pornography can’t be considered good in one case and bad in another case. Ones’ an action damage ones reputation, ones right and it is malicious act, then it will be considered morally wrong no matter what the circumstances is. Impact the law of the Bible will agreed on ethical relativism because pornography is really bad and it is a sin against God.
Ethical Egoism and Ethical Altruism
Ethical Altruism in the case of pornography is a pure mask self interest of the publisher; there is no desire to promote the good of others. And besides they promote immorality in the sight of God. Pornography is degrading women reputation. Who will benefit from it? Of course the Publisher and individual users who has self interest. They can use it for flesh or for arousal, black mail, and revenge and gain personal profit; to buy anything they want to. Individual have the capacity to think and discern what is right and wrong but then because of “human needs” or “human lust of the flesh” they did not think. They can’t control their action, that’s why they are doing it to satisfy their needs even they will abused someone’s reputation. I believe Mortiz Schlick of Vienna that “All choices, altruistic ones considered, are determined by the immediate pleasure felt by the person doing it. People have the tendency to lie about their motives in doing certain action or things, in reality they are self seeking”. They are all selfish. In ethical egoism what harms, the whole harms one. Pornography harms others reputation that’s why whatever we post must be taken into account. In the case of Pornography there is no freedom of expression, we don’t have the freedom to publish nude photos because it degrade ones personality and we must be responsible for that.
John Stuart Mills Utilitarianism
I don’t believe this finalist theory in the case of pornography. I really doubt that those actions that bring happiness are considered morally right while those actions that inhibit happiness is morally wrong. I know most of men are happy seeing nude photos of women in the internet which is morally wrong for me. But in this theory if we inhibit the happiness of a publisher or user who published nude photos it will be morally wrong. I don’t believe it; since publishing nude photos in the internet is a sin, it will not make me happy. It will bring us doom and we will be out in the sight of God. Happiness in pornography will be considered a yardstick of immorality. It’s alright to be happy if you helped for no reasons, if you helped without exchange, if you don’t degrade ones opinion, if you respect ones right that is the true happiness. But if you will degrade and abused one I don’t think its happiness, I called it self satisfaction and self interest. I just think we need to find the true happiness, the true happiness that God alone can give.
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperatives
I believe Immanuel Kant that only good will be considered good. Pornography is bad under all circumstances. “The acts is good not because of certain consequences that occur on its performances or on the basis of its end result, but because of the willing, that accompanies the act”. In the case of pornography the user who published nude photos has no good intention, that’s why his action is really bad under all circumstances. The intention of the publisher of the nude photos is to gain profit from it, although they know that it will destroy the soul of every human being. Pornography is not an art, but it is a lust of the flesh. It will boost the needs of a man; many are rape because of pornography in the net. I don’t see good things that it will bring to the society. I know that every human being is able to discern and decide whether to obey certain set of laws or not. But because of the free will given to us by God, we choose always the bad things and acted upon, which we think it make us happy although it’s against the law in the land and the law of God. Pornography can’t be considered good; the act of browsing the web of it is really bad. It’s a temptation browsing the net.
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Since pornography is a human action, I don’t see moral virtue in pornography or intellectual virtue. It is not righteous, it is not fair and it is not just. Pornography damages the lives of many young people. Yes, human actions in computing are subject to evaluation through certain norms of ethical value. But in the case of pornography the action is lewd, unethical and immoral. In any aspect or situation pornography is bad under all circumstances. Publishing nude photos is just a body pleasure, to gain short time of happiness. We the users of the World Wide Web must discern what is right and garbage what is wrong, but there is no sense if what we discern right is not acted upon. Christian countries like Philippines knows that pornography is bad under all circumstances, we set our mind not to engage with this, but when the body pleasure comes, most of us can’t resist the temptation because it gives happiness to our eyes. Pornography is a sin and doing this is evil. We don’t want to be trap by evil things, and as abiding citizen we must not be engage to this. Temperance is a virtue that we must have as a user. With this virtue, we will be able to regulate our appetite with respect to what would preserve our physical well being. In that case we will not patronize or reproduce pornography.
If I were granted indefinite and unrestricted access to the internet, I will not be interested to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned because I’m not fond of chatting and at the same time I’m just wasting my time. I don’t really chat to a stranger whom I don’t really know, besides I’m not ready to hear negative criticism and negative feedbacks regarding my opinion because I’m very emotional person. Yes, we have the freedom to express what is in our hearts and mind and that’s 90% correct, we must respect all the opinion of others and we are just honest with our self. But this freedom give us doom, freedom is only for those abiding citizen and know what is good and bad. Freedom is for those people who respect ones personality, that no one will be hurt and affected. But then, many abused their freedom of expression so as to published nude photos in the internet, published hate speeches and many more. You see if there is no barrier, many will be affected. But then it’s up to us if we will be affected on the issue published in the chat room, it’s really up to us. But the really problem in freedom to express what is inside your heart is the children and youth that will be affected. It’s alright if the entire oldies are affected, because they can resist and deny things that will be bad in their sight, but if it is a child or a youth then it will ruin their lives. I will say that anything to be published in the internet must be ethical, so as to have freedom of expression. Nevertheless, it’s alright for me if I join a chat group that will give me new knowledge and express what my opinion is, but not to the extent that one will be hurt because of hate speeches, and talking sex in the chat room which is “Yak, Kadiri at Bastos”. Pornography, combines images, spoken erotic text and/or other erotic sounds which is a sex crime, violating the law of God and the law in the land. Sex is sacred and it must be done secretly by married couple only. Publishing photos of a naked woman even it is altered is a malicious act. Most men arouse whenever they see nude photos in the internet, they are really amazed. (Oh Eve, your so beautiful). As a user we have the privilege to access the internet but we don’t have the rights to go beyond what is expected. We have given a privilege, don’t try to abuse it. If the topic of the chat group is nasty things like sex or nude photos of a woman or man, then I don’t want to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned. Freedom of expression for me is only for those ethical people in the entire world; know that everything he/she published will not affect ones soul neither could not hurt ones opinion, ones belief and others. Also freedom of expression could not be used just to gain profit or personal interest from others. We can speak freely what is in our hearts but we need strategies, good approaches so that no one will be offended. If ever we hate somebody else, we talk to them personally or email them with your opinion, not to the extent that all users of the World Wide Web will read the hate speeches you wrote, because it degrades ones personality. Publishing nude photos and sex scandals in the internet is too ridiculous and very unethical. The users who do things like this are “maniac and selfish”. If freedom of expressions includes pornography and sex scandals, hate speeches and the like, then I will not be interested to join a chat group that hold no barrier as far as free expression and communication are concerned because talking nasty things is very unethical and violate the Law of God. Pornography is a sin, so publishing nude photos in the internet is a sinful act.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Saq9: Social Justice Issues
Social Justice Issue
1. Choose one of the social justice issues in computing discussed above and find out what extent it is an issue in the Philippines.
According to further study of The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children, http://www/aauw.org •Girls are significantly more likely than boys to enroll in clerical and data-entry classes, the 1990s version of typing. Boys are more likely to enroll in advanced computer science and graphics courses.
•School software programs often reinforce gender bias and stereotypical gender roles.
•Girls consistently rate themselves significantly lower than boys on computer ability, and boys exhibit higher self-confidence and a more positive attitude about computers than do girls.
•Girls use computers less often outside of school. Boys enter the classroom with more prior experience with computers and other technology than girls.
Actually, I just observed that there are no gender gaps here in the Philippines in computing. Since the Philippines is a democratic country, males and females have a freedom to choose their courses. But although males and females enrolled in computer courses, most successful in computing is the male. Upon my observation most computer café are occupied by male. They spend lots of time for playing, researching and exploration; do some sort of programming and many more. The male is always advance in computing rather than female. Although I observed that now days there are many females who enrolled in this course like Computer Science, Programming, Computer Engineering, Computer Secretarial, Computer Management and the like but they are not as good as male. Most successful programmers, analyst and others are occupied by male, mainly because they are exposed earlier in the computer world, plus they always explore new things in the internet and they usually don’t do household chores. Yes, there are many females who enrolled in computing like in Quezon Province or even in the Philippines but almost male are hired related to what they’ve studied. Computer related courses are very in demand in the Philippines because almost company are using computers even the smaller one. But then, even there are many enrolled and graduated from this course most females are hired not related in their course. They are hired for clerical works, office staff and others. Like me I graduated 4 years in Computer Science but my field of work is not related, I’m in the management field. I just ask myself why I graduated from this course, or why did I took up BSCS and yet I will not work as a programmer, system analyst and the like? Maybe I choose the wrong path. Well that’s my perception. Anyway having knowledge in computing helps me a lot to do my reports and others.
Computer education culture discourages girls, survey says
From Staff Reports (Citation and clippings from the internet)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The methods used to teach computer programming classes are turning off girls at both the high school and college level, a new report says. As a result, it says, women make up just 20 per cent of the high-tech workforce. The report comes from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.
Entitled, Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age, it suggests information technology courses need to change in order engage the participation of more girls. The AAUW believes violent video games and programming classes that focus too narrowly on hardware and the mechanics of information technology are leading girls to turn away from pursuing careers in computers. The report suggests teachers need to incorporate technology concepts into more diverse subject areas -- like music, history, or the sciences -- in order to spark girls' interest. The report was authored by the AAUW Educational Foundation Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education. It includes results from an online survey of 900 teachers, focus group research involving more than 70 girls, and reviews of existing research.
At the high school level, the report indicates only 17% of computer science "Advanced Placement" test takers are girls. At the college level, women receive less than 28% of computer science bachelor degrees, and just 9% of engineering-related bachelor's degrees. The report concludes girls find computer programming classes "tedious and dull" and games "boring, redundant, and violent." The report suggests girls could step in and fill the information technology job shortage if the educational establishment makes computer programming courses more interesting to girls. And it stresses that girls' ability to simply use computers to send e-mail or surf the web is no substitute for comprehensive computer study. "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving," said Pamela Haag, the Foundation's director of research.
"To get girls "under the hood" of technology, they need to see that it gets them where they want to go. And for a large part of the population, that process must start in the classroom.
Conclusion
There are many who enrolled in STI, AMA Computer College, Informatics, Enverga University, Sacred Heart College, ABE, and other computer institution that are females here in Quezon Province. But as I can see, most graduate females are not having a job related to what their bachelor is. Yes, they use their skills in computing because most company needs employees who have knowledge in computer using Microsoft Word and Excel or know how to operate the computer or the basic principles of the computer. But most females are bored in computer programming, having difficulty to analyze how the programs will run is a very tedious work. I’m talking as a whole. And in fact nowadays computer world and programs is changing very fast. Computer graduates must know the latest programs every time so that they will be advance, although we need specialization. Girls as a whole are fun of chatting in the internet, although there are some girls interested in programming field and exploration. I do believe Pamela Haag, "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving.” Most males are fun of exploring the internet rather than females. Not only in the Philippines but in every country, most of the girls are interested in music, communication like having a job in a call center, managing companies, do clerical works and others but only some are interested in computing field.
What about access to the Internet for those with physical disabilities?
Having physical disabilities is not a big deal to access the internet, although it’s difficult to access the internet with physical disabilities. I don’t think it is a gap between the normal people. Here in Lucena City, we have 2 schools in public for those disable person or special child. They are trained to use or access the computer although they need assistance from their teacher, so they will understand. If I’m not mistaken the Philippines are taking care of the disable person well, they put schools that will teach disable person so that they will be in the computer age. And as far as I know no computer café put signage that disable people can’t be entertained. Disable or not have the same rights.
Are people unable to access the net?
Some Filipinos mostly in provinces, does not access the internet or even use the computer as a means of communication. Maybe because they don’t want to be knowledgeable about it, meaning there are too many things to do rather than use the computer. Some can’t access because their province has no electricity or they are in the middle of the mountain or a sea, and so they need to go down to the mountain and go to a city wherein they can access the computer world. Some don’t know how to access, even they don’t know how to read and write or even understand English language for communication. Some Filipinos are not open-minded and some does not have money to access or even bought computers just for it. Not all can access because not all can afford to buy computers or enrolled to computer subjects and the like. Does the government of the Philippines give projects and trainings to those people in the provinces to teach them how to access the computer world? I just think there is none. Almost 30% of the Filipino people are unaware in the computer world or not aware what is the used of computer. They are not updated.
Unicode could be a great help to those who have knowledge in computer but it can’t be a help to those person who don’t know and understand the computer world. But Unicode is an advantage for us in a way that many people (the whole people of the world) will clearly understand what is in that particular web because Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning these numbers. No single encoding could contain enough characters: for example, the European Union alone requires several different encodings to cover all its languages. Even for a single language like English no single encoding was adequate for all the letters, punctuation, and technical symbols in common use. These encoding systems also conflict with one another. That is, two encodings can use the same number for two different characters, or use different numbers for the same character. Any given computer (especially servers) needs to support many different encodings; yet whenever data is passed between different encodings or platforms, that data always runs the risk of corruption. Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.. The emergence of the Unicode Standard, and the availability of tools supporting it, are among the most significant recent global software technology trends.Incorporating Unicode into client-server or multi-tiered applications and websites offers significant cost savings over the use of legacy character sets. Unicode enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It allows data to be transported through many different systems without corruption. http://www.unicode.org
2. Is denial of access in computing a social justice issue? Discuss your answer.
As I’ve said earlier in the course site it depends upon the situation, or it depends upon the users’ belief. In telecommunication, the term access denial (system blocking) has the following meanings:
•Access failure caused by the issuing of a system blocking signal by a communications system that does not have a call-originator camp-on feature.
•Access failure caused by exceeding the maximum access time and nominal system access time fraction during an access attempt.
Access failure: In a communications system, an unsuccessful access that results in termination of an access attempt in any manner other than initiation of user information transfer between the intended source and destination (sink) within the specified maximum access time. Access is also denied if the users attempt to modify or remove something in the web without authorization, Circumventing logon or other security measures, using information systems for any illegal or unauthorized purpose, Sending any fraudulent electronic communication, Violating any software license or copyright without the written authorization of the software owner, using electronic communications to violate the property rights of authors and copyright owners, using electronic communications to harass or threaten others, forging, fraudulently altering or falsifying, to spam or flame, use electronic communications to hoard, damage, launching a computer worm, computer virus, or other rogue program and others.
Access in computing is a privilege not a right. If ever one’s access is denied then we must respect it, because we can’t blame the owner of a particular web for doing this or that because there are many hackers who are snooping around and get information which is illegal. Also, we have our own belief. What we believe or others believe must be respected. Yes, there are web for females only. “That’s pure girls talk”. That’s the way they believe and we must respect it. If you want to access this web and your male, you can’t access the web of course. We must respect the owners of it. Denial of access in computing could be a social justice issue or it could not be a social justice issues. My stand is I’m in the middle.
1. Choose one of the social justice issues in computing discussed above and find out what extent it is an issue in the Philippines.
According to further study of The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children, http://www/aauw.org •Girls are significantly more likely than boys to enroll in clerical and data-entry classes, the 1990s version of typing. Boys are more likely to enroll in advanced computer science and graphics courses.
•School software programs often reinforce gender bias and stereotypical gender roles.
•Girls consistently rate themselves significantly lower than boys on computer ability, and boys exhibit higher self-confidence and a more positive attitude about computers than do girls.
•Girls use computers less often outside of school. Boys enter the classroom with more prior experience with computers and other technology than girls.
Actually, I just observed that there are no gender gaps here in the Philippines in computing. Since the Philippines is a democratic country, males and females have a freedom to choose their courses. But although males and females enrolled in computer courses, most successful in computing is the male. Upon my observation most computer café are occupied by male. They spend lots of time for playing, researching and exploration; do some sort of programming and many more. The male is always advance in computing rather than female. Although I observed that now days there are many females who enrolled in this course like Computer Science, Programming, Computer Engineering, Computer Secretarial, Computer Management and the like but they are not as good as male. Most successful programmers, analyst and others are occupied by male, mainly because they are exposed earlier in the computer world, plus they always explore new things in the internet and they usually don’t do household chores. Yes, there are many females who enrolled in computing like in Quezon Province or even in the Philippines but almost male are hired related to what they’ve studied. Computer related courses are very in demand in the Philippines because almost company are using computers even the smaller one. But then, even there are many enrolled and graduated from this course most females are hired not related in their course. They are hired for clerical works, office staff and others. Like me I graduated 4 years in Computer Science but my field of work is not related, I’m in the management field. I just ask myself why I graduated from this course, or why did I took up BSCS and yet I will not work as a programmer, system analyst and the like? Maybe I choose the wrong path. Well that’s my perception. Anyway having knowledge in computing helps me a lot to do my reports and others.
Computer education culture discourages girls, survey says
From Staff Reports (Citation and clippings from the internet)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The methods used to teach computer programming classes are turning off girls at both the high school and college level, a new report says. As a result, it says, women make up just 20 per cent of the high-tech workforce. The report comes from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.
Entitled, Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age, it suggests information technology courses need to change in order engage the participation of more girls. The AAUW believes violent video games and programming classes that focus too narrowly on hardware and the mechanics of information technology are leading girls to turn away from pursuing careers in computers. The report suggests teachers need to incorporate technology concepts into more diverse subject areas -- like music, history, or the sciences -- in order to spark girls' interest. The report was authored by the AAUW Educational Foundation Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education. It includes results from an online survey of 900 teachers, focus group research involving more than 70 girls, and reviews of existing research.
At the high school level, the report indicates only 17% of computer science "Advanced Placement" test takers are girls. At the college level, women receive less than 28% of computer science bachelor degrees, and just 9% of engineering-related bachelor's degrees. The report concludes girls find computer programming classes "tedious and dull" and games "boring, redundant, and violent." The report suggests girls could step in and fill the information technology job shortage if the educational establishment makes computer programming courses more interesting to girls. And it stresses that girls' ability to simply use computers to send e-mail or surf the web is no substitute for comprehensive computer study. "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving," said Pamela Haag, the Foundation's director of research.
"To get girls "under the hood" of technology, they need to see that it gets them where they want to go. And for a large part of the population, that process must start in the classroom.
Conclusion
There are many who enrolled in STI, AMA Computer College, Informatics, Enverga University, Sacred Heart College, ABE, and other computer institution that are females here in Quezon Province. But as I can see, most graduate females are not having a job related to what their bachelor is. Yes, they use their skills in computing because most company needs employees who have knowledge in computer using Microsoft Word and Excel or know how to operate the computer or the basic principles of the computer. But most females are bored in computer programming, having difficulty to analyze how the programs will run is a very tedious work. I’m talking as a whole. And in fact nowadays computer world and programs is changing very fast. Computer graduates must know the latest programs every time so that they will be advance, although we need specialization. Girls as a whole are fun of chatting in the internet, although there are some girls interested in programming field and exploration. I do believe Pamela Haag, "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving.” Most males are fun of exploring the internet rather than females. Not only in the Philippines but in every country, most of the girls are interested in music, communication like having a job in a call center, managing companies, do clerical works and others but only some are interested in computing field.
What about access to the Internet for those with physical disabilities?
Having physical disabilities is not a big deal to access the internet, although it’s difficult to access the internet with physical disabilities. I don’t think it is a gap between the normal people. Here in Lucena City, we have 2 schools in public for those disable person or special child. They are trained to use or access the computer although they need assistance from their teacher, so they will understand. If I’m not mistaken the Philippines are taking care of the disable person well, they put schools that will teach disable person so that they will be in the computer age. And as far as I know no computer café put signage that disable people can’t be entertained. Disable or not have the same rights.
Are people unable to access the net?
Some Filipinos mostly in provinces, does not access the internet or even use the computer as a means of communication. Maybe because they don’t want to be knowledgeable about it, meaning there are too many things to do rather than use the computer. Some can’t access because their province has no electricity or they are in the middle of the mountain or a sea, and so they need to go down to the mountain and go to a city wherein they can access the computer world. Some don’t know how to access, even they don’t know how to read and write or even understand English language for communication. Some Filipinos are not open-minded and some does not have money to access or even bought computers just for it. Not all can access because not all can afford to buy computers or enrolled to computer subjects and the like. Does the government of the Philippines give projects and trainings to those people in the provinces to teach them how to access the computer world? I just think there is none. Almost 30% of the Filipino people are unaware in the computer world or not aware what is the used of computer. They are not updated.
Unicode could be a great help to those who have knowledge in computer but it can’t be a help to those person who don’t know and understand the computer world. But Unicode is an advantage for us in a way that many people (the whole people of the world) will clearly understand what is in that particular web because Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. Before Unicode was invented, there were hundreds of different encoding systems for assigning these numbers. No single encoding could contain enough characters: for example, the European Union alone requires several different encodings to cover all its languages. Even for a single language like English no single encoding was adequate for all the letters, punctuation, and technical symbols in common use. These encoding systems also conflict with one another. That is, two encodings can use the same number for two different characters, or use different numbers for the same character. Any given computer (especially servers) needs to support many different encodings; yet whenever data is passed between different encodings or platforms, that data always runs the risk of corruption. Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.. The emergence of the Unicode Standard, and the availability of tools supporting it, are among the most significant recent global software technology trends.Incorporating Unicode into client-server or multi-tiered applications and websites offers significant cost savings over the use of legacy character sets. Unicode enables a single software product or a single website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It allows data to be transported through many different systems without corruption. http://www.unicode.org
2. Is denial of access in computing a social justice issue? Discuss your answer.
As I’ve said earlier in the course site it depends upon the situation, or it depends upon the users’ belief. In telecommunication, the term access denial (system blocking) has the following meanings:
•Access failure caused by the issuing of a system blocking signal by a communications system that does not have a call-originator camp-on feature.
•Access failure caused by exceeding the maximum access time and nominal system access time fraction during an access attempt.
Access failure: In a communications system, an unsuccessful access that results in termination of an access attempt in any manner other than initiation of user information transfer between the intended source and destination (sink) within the specified maximum access time. Access is also denied if the users attempt to modify or remove something in the web without authorization, Circumventing logon or other security measures, using information systems for any illegal or unauthorized purpose, Sending any fraudulent electronic communication, Violating any software license or copyright without the written authorization of the software owner, using electronic communications to violate the property rights of authors and copyright owners, using electronic communications to harass or threaten others, forging, fraudulently altering or falsifying, to spam or flame, use electronic communications to hoard, damage, launching a computer worm, computer virus, or other rogue program and others.
Access in computing is a privilege not a right. If ever one’s access is denied then we must respect it, because we can’t blame the owner of a particular web for doing this or that because there are many hackers who are snooping around and get information which is illegal. Also, we have our own belief. What we believe or others believe must be respected. Yes, there are web for females only. “That’s pure girls talk”. That’s the way they believe and we must respect it. If you want to access this web and your male, you can’t access the web of course. We must respect the owners of it. Denial of access in computing could be a social justice issue or it could not be a social justice issues. My stand is I’m in the middle.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Saq8: Privacy Issues
Privacy – according to Webster dictionary privacy is the condition of being private; seclusion; retirement. A matter that is or should be private. The state of being secret; avoidance of display or publicity; secrecy. A place of seclusion and retreat.
1. Explain the following types of privacy. Evaluate them by applying an ethical principle for each.
Data base privacy
Every company has their own data base files like my company in a Store Operation Department. We have employee data base file, payroll account database file, transactions data base including transient deliveries in and out, inventory database, payment database file, customers’ data base file, marketing files and planogram data base file. In planogram database file, we use to put our monthly plans or future plans of the store; marketing database files is all about marketing strategy, the brochures, the ads, the mobile we use, the design and others; customers data base files, of course its all about customer files; payment database file is all about the expenses and suppliers payment; inventory database is all about ABC analysis, the items which is moving and non moving, the automatic replenishment, the schedule of deliveries and others; payroll account of course is payment for the whole staff; and lastly is employee database files, the bibliography of the employee is here. That’s all about the database in the store. Mostly database file is hack by those nearly competitors to see what’s new in the organization, to see the plans of that company. If ever they saw it, they will use better plan to boost sales which is merely wrong and unprofessional. Every company must have their own strategy, plans and others even without looking unto the neighbors’ idea. It must be original. Companies’ data base file is very private, meaning strangers or hackers are not allowed to access that file. Even it’s not in computing, we don’t give any information regarding this particular employee or customer because it’s confidential. Ones a file is company owned, or owned by somebody else we must respect it, because it’s private property. See illustration, Lydia is a system administrator of Company A, selling furniture, house ware and computer peripherals. As a system administrator she knows all about the supplier who supplies their items and all of the customers of that company. Because of that she told her best friend to put up business like this, so that their own business will boost and will make a sale. Lydia gets all the files of the supplier and the customer of Company A. She contact the supplier and made some deals that whatever discount the Company A is having will be given to her or may be in the most cheapest way. Plus she told the customer of Company A to buy items in her own store, which the items can be bought in cheaper amount than the Company of A. Because of this, most customer of Company of A goes to her store. Oh money. The love of money is the fruit of evil. Lydia forgot that she is in the Company and must abide the rules and regulation of the company. The company found out that Lydia is the reason why they got very low turn over of sales in the company. That’s why they accused them for imprisonment. Illustration 2: Joseph is a computer genius and hired to be a computer programmer, but then his company is the 3rd top company in the whole America. His boss and the management want to be the top company in America. That’s why he told him to access the files of the 2 company to have an advance idea so that they will have better plans, and so they can achieve the best, to be the number 1 company in America. Because of this, as per instruction of his boss he hack the data base files of their competitors which is against the law in computing. Truly the act of Joseph is unethical and punishable by law. It is morally wrong under all circumstances. I just think that I must sacrifice my work so that I will not violate the law in the land.
E-mail Privacy
I agree that the only sender (Me) and the intended recipient (You), and no body else, should read what I write in my email. That’s e-mail privacy. If ever my email is access and read by the system administrator who has access in my account, then, it is very unethical. My question is that why we have our own email address if all can access that particular email address? Right! What is the important of user id and password if our emails are readable to any body else? What is the use of password, if all can access? It’s useless; I just think that we don’t need password and user Id if there’s no e-mail privacy, because we have freedom to read even it’s not yours. My real opinion is that, I’m very mad to those people who read my email and use my email address without informing me. There must be e-mail privacy. If it is private, then it must be a private property. Here in the Philippines, if one is talking you must listen and wait for your turn to talk, so that you will not be unethical. If someone is in your house or a visitor in your house, and then you pass by, you will say excuse me to be ethical, what more if you and I snoop around in other people files, then it is very unethical. They said that because of curiosity they used to snoop around in other people files, but the right word for me is not curiosity but “Pakialamero”. You and I must not access emails of others. Just mind your own business.
Confirmed Email Privacy Hole at Orkut
For instance, whenever a message is send to anyone in the system that is forwarded by email, in the message headers it will read:
From: "Christopher Allen"
Reply-To: "Christopher Allen";
When someone reads the message in their email software, the "From:" line will be Christopher name but with the fake email address of -- however, when you reply to it, it will use the real email address. This appears to happen whether or not you have the privacy settings to reveal the email address.
The second is that, sometimes we the users forgot to sign out with the system or the internet itself. Mostly, if we just rent a PC through Computer Café we forgot to log out, that’s why it’s too easy for them to access our email and sometimes used our e-mail address for their own benefit. Truly e-mail is private, if we access one’s email, then it is very unethical. We must respect the privacy of every user. If ever that other user forgot to log out, just close it and don’t try to read it because it’s against the reputation of others.
Privacy on the web
Really we can’t expect privacy in the web. Yes, we can browse the web freely, but then because of too much freedom in the web we violate it. Most web site collects information, how the information is used and what they do to protect any information they gathered. Washburn University respects the privacy of all Web site visitors to the extent permitted by law. There is a Web Privacy statement intended to inform the users of the ways in which this Web site collects information, how the information is used and what they do to protect any information the user choose to provide Washburn University.
Your rights
Yes, we have the rights under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Privacy Act
Freedom of Information Act http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/552.html>
There are four types of information that may be collected during your visit in a site: network traffic information, Web server statistic logs, cookies, and information voluntarily provided by the user.
Network Traffic
In the course of ensuring network security and consistent service for all users, the University may use software programs to do such things as:
• Analyze network traffic
• Identify unauthorized access
• Detect computer viruses and other software that might damage University
computers or the network
• Monitor and maintain the performance of the University network
In the course of such monitoring, these programs may detect such information as e-mail headers, addresses from network packets and other information. Information from these activities is used solely for the purpose of maintaining the security and performance of the University's networks and computer systems. Personally identifiable information from these activities is not released to external parties unless required by law.
Web Server Logs, the University Web server collects and stores information from Web site visitors to monitor Web site performance and to improve service. This information includes the following:
• Page visited
• Date and time of the visit
• Domain name or IP address of the referring site
• Domain name and IP address from which the access occurred
• Version of browser used and the capabilities of the browser
• Search terms entered into our search engine
The University makes no attempt to identify individual visitors from this information: any personally identifiable information is not released to external parties unless required by law.
Cookies
Cookies are small bits of data stored on your hard drive on behalf of a Web site and returned to the Web site on request. This site may use cookies for two purposes: to carry data about your current session at the site from one Web page to the next, and to identify you to the site between visits. If you prefer not to receive cookies, you may turn them off in your browser, or may set your browser to ask you before accepting a new cookie. Some pages may not function properly if the cookies are turned off. Unless otherwise notified on this site, they will not store data, other than for these two purposes, in cookies. Cookies remain on your computer. University does not forward them to any external parties. Unless otherwise notified on this site, they do not use cookies to track your movement among different Web sites and do not exchange cookies with other entities.
All website are private, we used to browse the web to get idea and information. Website helps us in many ways in the office, in school and others. If ever we don’t like the settings, the information posted in their web, we can post comments. But then we must respect their privacy and that is not to do bad things and published slandering idea or comments in their web. The owner of the website respects their visitor, and so the website visitor must respect also the website he/she is visiting. What ever comments and suggestion that will be posted in the website he/she visiting is a great help for improvement.
2. Think of an act, other than those already discussed in this module that would constitute a violation of privacy in computing. Explain.
Privacy of Intellectual Property or Software Privacy - rights of computer programmers, ones a program has been designed by someone else; we the users must not infringe or copy it nor sell it, neither run the applications, as if were the owner of that program. Just keep in mind, that it’s not yours, so don’t do bad things. We must respect the owner, if he/she allowed us to use this program then it’s good, but if not, just stop it and mind your own business. If you want to be respected, then respect the rights of the others. Always foot yourself on other shoes. Don’t be so ridiculous and don’t be greedy. Greediness is not from God, it’s from the devil. So, if it is private then it must be private, period. Have pity to the owner of the software. If we are going to infringe it, we are just like those criminals who killed innocent people, but in different way. So no to infringement of Intellectual property, it must be a private property.
Communication Privacy (Chat room or Newsgroup)
Mostly unknown users go to the Newsgroup or chat room to intrude, and not just to intrude but then to flame. Flame people and disrespect the opinion in the Newsgroup, bulletin boards and chat room. Most of the time the information is illegal, inaccurate and slanderous resulting miss communication and disrespect. In most cases when one group agreed to chat, to talk to a serious subject, one will appear and join the group for discussion which violates the communication of privacy of others.
1. Explain the following types of privacy. Evaluate them by applying an ethical principle for each.
Data base privacy
Every company has their own data base files like my company in a Store Operation Department. We have employee data base file, payroll account database file, transactions data base including transient deliveries in and out, inventory database, payment database file, customers’ data base file, marketing files and planogram data base file. In planogram database file, we use to put our monthly plans or future plans of the store; marketing database files is all about marketing strategy, the brochures, the ads, the mobile we use, the design and others; customers data base files, of course its all about customer files; payment database file is all about the expenses and suppliers payment; inventory database is all about ABC analysis, the items which is moving and non moving, the automatic replenishment, the schedule of deliveries and others; payroll account of course is payment for the whole staff; and lastly is employee database files, the bibliography of the employee is here. That’s all about the database in the store. Mostly database file is hack by those nearly competitors to see what’s new in the organization, to see the plans of that company. If ever they saw it, they will use better plan to boost sales which is merely wrong and unprofessional. Every company must have their own strategy, plans and others even without looking unto the neighbors’ idea. It must be original. Companies’ data base file is very private, meaning strangers or hackers are not allowed to access that file. Even it’s not in computing, we don’t give any information regarding this particular employee or customer because it’s confidential. Ones a file is company owned, or owned by somebody else we must respect it, because it’s private property. See illustration, Lydia is a system administrator of Company A, selling furniture, house ware and computer peripherals. As a system administrator she knows all about the supplier who supplies their items and all of the customers of that company. Because of that she told her best friend to put up business like this, so that their own business will boost and will make a sale. Lydia gets all the files of the supplier and the customer of Company A. She contact the supplier and made some deals that whatever discount the Company A is having will be given to her or may be in the most cheapest way. Plus she told the customer of Company A to buy items in her own store, which the items can be bought in cheaper amount than the Company of A. Because of this, most customer of Company of A goes to her store. Oh money. The love of money is the fruit of evil. Lydia forgot that she is in the Company and must abide the rules and regulation of the company. The company found out that Lydia is the reason why they got very low turn over of sales in the company. That’s why they accused them for imprisonment. Illustration 2: Joseph is a computer genius and hired to be a computer programmer, but then his company is the 3rd top company in the whole America. His boss and the management want to be the top company in America. That’s why he told him to access the files of the 2 company to have an advance idea so that they will have better plans, and so they can achieve the best, to be the number 1 company in America. Because of this, as per instruction of his boss he hack the data base files of their competitors which is against the law in computing. Truly the act of Joseph is unethical and punishable by law. It is morally wrong under all circumstances. I just think that I must sacrifice my work so that I will not violate the law in the land.
E-mail Privacy
I agree that the only sender (Me) and the intended recipient (You), and no body else, should read what I write in my email. That’s e-mail privacy. If ever my email is access and read by the system administrator who has access in my account, then, it is very unethical. My question is that why we have our own email address if all can access that particular email address? Right! What is the important of user id and password if our emails are readable to any body else? What is the use of password, if all can access? It’s useless; I just think that we don’t need password and user Id if there’s no e-mail privacy, because we have freedom to read even it’s not yours. My real opinion is that, I’m very mad to those people who read my email and use my email address without informing me. There must be e-mail privacy. If it is private, then it must be a private property. Here in the Philippines, if one is talking you must listen and wait for your turn to talk, so that you will not be unethical. If someone is in your house or a visitor in your house, and then you pass by, you will say excuse me to be ethical, what more if you and I snoop around in other people files, then it is very unethical. They said that because of curiosity they used to snoop around in other people files, but the right word for me is not curiosity but “Pakialamero”. You and I must not access emails of others. Just mind your own business.
Confirmed Email Privacy Hole at Orkut
For instance, whenever a message is send to anyone in the system that is forwarded by email, in the message headers it will read:
From: "Christopher Allen"
Reply-To: "Christopher Allen"
When someone reads the message in their email software, the "From:" line will be Christopher name but with the fake email address of
The second is that, sometimes we the users forgot to sign out with the system or the internet itself. Mostly, if we just rent a PC through Computer Café we forgot to log out, that’s why it’s too easy for them to access our email and sometimes used our e-mail address for their own benefit. Truly e-mail is private, if we access one’s email, then it is very unethical. We must respect the privacy of every user. If ever that other user forgot to log out, just close it and don’t try to read it because it’s against the reputation of others.
Privacy on the web
Really we can’t expect privacy in the web. Yes, we can browse the web freely, but then because of too much freedom in the web we violate it. Most web site collects information, how the information is used and what they do to protect any information they gathered. Washburn University respects the privacy of all Web site visitors to the extent permitted by law. There is a Web Privacy statement intended to inform the users of the ways in which this Web site collects information, how the information is used and what they do to protect any information the user choose to provide Washburn University.
Your rights
Yes, we have the rights under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Privacy Act
Freedom of Information Act http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/552.html>
There are four types of information that may be collected during your visit in a site: network traffic information, Web server statistic logs, cookies, and information voluntarily provided by the user.
Network Traffic
In the course of ensuring network security and consistent service for all users, the University may use software programs to do such things as:
• Analyze network traffic
• Identify unauthorized access
• Detect computer viruses and other software that might damage University
computers or the network
• Monitor and maintain the performance of the University network
In the course of such monitoring, these programs may detect such information as e-mail headers, addresses from network packets and other information. Information from these activities is used solely for the purpose of maintaining the security and performance of the University's networks and computer systems. Personally identifiable information from these activities is not released to external parties unless required by law.
Web Server Logs, the University Web server collects and stores information from Web site visitors to monitor Web site performance and to improve service. This information includes the following:
• Page visited
• Date and time of the visit
• Domain name or IP address of the referring site
• Domain name and IP address from which the access occurred
• Version of browser used and the capabilities of the browser
• Search terms entered into our search engine
The University makes no attempt to identify individual visitors from this information: any personally identifiable information is not released to external parties unless required by law.
Cookies
Cookies are small bits of data stored on your hard drive on behalf of a Web site and returned to the Web site on request. This site may use cookies for two purposes: to carry data about your current session at the site from one Web page to the next, and to identify you to the site between visits. If you prefer not to receive cookies, you may turn them off in your browser, or may set your browser to ask you before accepting a new cookie. Some pages may not function properly if the cookies are turned off. Unless otherwise notified on this site, they will not store data, other than for these two purposes, in cookies. Cookies remain on your computer. University does not forward them to any external parties. Unless otherwise notified on this site, they do not use cookies to track your movement among different Web sites and do not exchange cookies with other entities.
All website are private, we used to browse the web to get idea and information. Website helps us in many ways in the office, in school and others. If ever we don’t like the settings, the information posted in their web, we can post comments. But then we must respect their privacy and that is not to do bad things and published slandering idea or comments in their web. The owner of the website respects their visitor, and so the website visitor must respect also the website he/she is visiting. What ever comments and suggestion that will be posted in the website he/she visiting is a great help for improvement.
2. Think of an act, other than those already discussed in this module that would constitute a violation of privacy in computing. Explain.
Privacy of Intellectual Property or Software Privacy - rights of computer programmers, ones a program has been designed by someone else; we the users must not infringe or copy it nor sell it, neither run the applications, as if were the owner of that program. Just keep in mind, that it’s not yours, so don’t do bad things. We must respect the owner, if he/she allowed us to use this program then it’s good, but if not, just stop it and mind your own business. If you want to be respected, then respect the rights of the others. Always foot yourself on other shoes. Don’t be so ridiculous and don’t be greedy. Greediness is not from God, it’s from the devil. So, if it is private then it must be private, period. Have pity to the owner of the software. If we are going to infringe it, we are just like those criminals who killed innocent people, but in different way. So no to infringement of Intellectual property, it must be a private property.
Communication Privacy (Chat room or Newsgroup)
Mostly unknown users go to the Newsgroup or chat room to intrude, and not just to intrude but then to flame. Flame people and disrespect the opinion in the Newsgroup, bulletin boards and chat room. Most of the time the information is illegal, inaccurate and slanderous resulting miss communication and disrespect. In most cases when one group agreed to chat, to talk to a serious subject, one will appear and join the group for discussion which violates the communication of privacy of others.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Saq7: Computer Abuses
1. What is spamming? Differentiate it from flaming.
Spamming is the use of any electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages in bulk. In the popular eye, the most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form of commercial advertising. Sending bulk messages in this fashion, to recipients who have not solicited them, has come to be known as spamming, and the messages themselves as spam.Traditional advertising methods, such as billboards, TV or newspaper ads are similar to spam in that they are usually unsolicited and sent in bulk. Spamming has been considered by various commercial, government, and independent entities to be one of the foremost social problems facing electronic media today. While Flaming is the performance of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are often posted in response to flamebait. Also the sending of abusive email or messages to other people or newsgroup.
Types of Spamming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
E-mail spam is by far the most common form of spamming on the internet. It involves sending identical or nearly identical messages to a large number of recipients. Unlike legitimate commercial e-mail, spam is generally sent without the explicit permission of the recipients, and frequently contains various tricks to bypass e-mail filters.
Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply guessed by using common names and domains. By definition, spam is sent without the permission of the recipients.
Messaging spam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Messaging spam, sometimes called spim, is a type of spamming where the target is instant messaging services.Instant messaging (IM) systems are a popular target for spammers. Many IM systems offer a directory of users, including demographic information such as age and sex. Advertisers can gather this information, sign on to the system, and send unsolicited messages.
Newsgroup spam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Newsgroup spam is a type of spamming where the targets are Usenet newsgroups.
Spamming of Usenet newsgroups actually pre-dates email spam. The first widely recognized Usenet spam (though not the most famous) was posted on January 18, 1994 by Clarence L. Thomas IV, a sysadmin at Andrews University. Entitled "GlobalAlert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9401191510.AA18576%40jse.stat.ncsu.edu)", it was a fundamentalist religious tract claiming that "this world's history is coming to a climax." The newsgroup posting bot Serdar Argic also appeared in early 1994, posting tens of thousands of messages to various newsgroups, consisting of identical copies of a political screed relating to the Armenian Genocide.
Internet telephony spam
It has been predicted that voice over IP (VoIP) communications will be vulnerable to being spammed by pre-recorded messages. Although there have been few reported incidents, some companies have already tried to sell defenses against it. [2] (http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3398331)
Spamdexing or search engine spamming is the practice of deliberately and dishonestly modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a dishonest manner. Many designers of web pages try to get a good ranking in search engines and design their pages accordingly. Spamdexing refers exclusively to practices that are dishonest and mislead search and indexing programs to give a page a ranking it does not deserve.
People who do this are called search engine spammers. The word is a portmanteau of "spamming" and "indexing".
Link spam (also called blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting weblogs (or blogs), but also affects wikis (where it is often called wikispam), guestbooks, and online discussion boards. Any web application that displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors or the referring URLs of web visitors may be a target.
Adding links that point to the spammer's web site increases the page rankings for the site in the search engine Google. An increased page rank means the spammer's commercial site would be listed ahead of other sites for certain Google searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers2.
Link spamming originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly fill a guestbook with links to their own site and no relevant comment to increase search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.
Wiki spam
Wikis are also a target of search engine spam, quite similar to blog spam. If you notice spamming/vandalism on this wiki please report it at Vandalism in progress.
Guestbook spam
Though more "old-school" than blogs or wikis, guestbooks are still present on some sites, and are subject to the same sorts of spam.
Referer spam
A spammer makes repeated web site requests using a fake referer url pointing to a spam-advertised site. Sites that publicize their referer statistics will then also link to the spammer's site. Main article: Referer spam
Mobile phone spam is a form of spamming directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. It is described as mobile spamming, sms spam, but is most frequently referred to as m-spam.
In 2002 and 2003, frequent users of cell phone text messages began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited (and generally unwanted) commercial advertisements being sent to their cell phones through text messaging.
In the United States, this use is regulated by the Can Spam Act of 2003.
Often these messages consist of a simple request to call a number. Normal mobile phone etiquette often results in the call being returned by the user. When they then return the call, they are unaware that they have been fraudulently induced to call a premium-rate line. There is frequently an attempt to get them to hold on the line for as long as possible in order to maximise revenue from this fraud.
Another form of mobile phone fraud is the one-ring fraud, where an incoming call to a mobile phone is timed such that it will ring once, and then cut off before the user can answer. This leaves the missed call number on their phone, and the rest of the fraud is as above. In this case, it is the (real or apparent) calling number details which are being spammed to the phone, as these calls are made in their hundreds of thousands by autodialers at little or no cost to the originator, as there is no charge for calls which do not connect.
Both of these frauds can be combined with other frauds such as the advance fee fraud, as they act as a pre-screening stage for fraudsters to capture the telephone numbers of particularly trusting individuals.
Commercial uses
The most common purpose for spamming is advertising. Goods commonly advertised in spam include pornography, computer software, medical products such as Viagra, credit card accounts, and fad products. In part because of the bad reputation (and dubious legal status) which spamming carries, it is chiefly used to carry offers of an ill-reputed or questionably legal nature. Many of the products advertised in spam are fraudulent in nature, such as quack medications and get-rich-quick schemes. Spam is frequently used to advertise scams, such as diploma mills, advance fee fraud, pyramid schemes, stock pump-and-dump schemes and password phishing. It is also often used to advertise pornography indiscriminately, even in jurisdictions where it is illegal to transmit pornographic solicitations to minor children, or even for anyone to view it at all.
The use of spamming in other countries is often different. For example, in Russia spamming is commonly used by many mainstream legitimate businesses, such as travel agencies, printing shops, training centres, real estate agencies, seminar and conference organisers and even self-employed electricians and garbage collection companies. In fact, the most prominent Russian spammer was American English Center, a language school in Moscow. That spamming sparked a powerful anti-spam movement, including enraging the deputy minister of communications Andrey Korotkov and provoked a wave of counter attacks on the spammer through non-internet channels, including a massive telephone DDOS attack.
Comparison to postal "junk" mail
There are a number of differences between spam and junk mail:
• Unlike junk postal mail, the costs of spam paid for by the recipient's mail site commonly approach or even exceed those of the sender, in terms of bandwidth, CPU processing time, and storage space. Spammers frequently use free dial-up accounts, so their costs may be quite minimal indeed. Because of this offloading of costs onto the recipient, many consider spamming to be theft or criminal conversion.
• Junk mail can be said to subsidize the delivery of mail customers want to receive. For example, the United States Postal Service allows bulk mail senders to pay a lower rate than for first-class mail, because they are required to sort their mailings and apply bar codes, which makes their mail much cheaper to process. While some ISPs receive large fees from spammers, most do not — and most pay the costs of carrying or filtering unwanted spam.
• Another distinction is that the costs of sending junk mail provide incentives to be somewhat selective about recipients, whereas the spammer has much lower costs, and therefore much less incentive.
• Finally, bulk mail is by and large used by businesses who are traceable and can be held responsible for what they send. Spammers frequently operate on a fly-by-night basis, using the so-called "anarchy" of the Internet as a cover.
Non-commercial spam
E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political in nature. Serdar Argic, for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages.
Spamming has also been used as a denial of service tactic, particularly on Usenet. By overwhelming the readers of a newsgroup with an inordinate number of nonsense messages, legitimate messages can be lost and computing resources are consumed. Since these messages are usually forged (that is, sent falsely under regular posters' names) this tactic has come to be known as sporgery (from spam + forgery). This tactic has for instance been used by partisans of the Church of Scientology against the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup (see Scientology vs. the Internet) and by spammers against news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail, a forum for mail administrators to discuss spam problems. Applied to e-mail, this is termed mailbombing.
In a handful of cases, forged e-mail spam has been used as a tool of harassment. The spammer collects a list of addresses as usual, then sends a spam to them signed with the name of the person he wishes to harass. Some recipients, angry that they received spam and seeing an obvious "source", will respond angrily or pursue various sorts of revenge against the apparent spammer, the forgery victim. A widely known victim of this sort of harassment was Joe's CyberPost (http://joes.com/), which has lent its name to the offense: it is known as a joe job. Such joe jobs have been most often used against anti-spammers: in more recent examples, Steve Linford of Spamhaus Project and Timothy Walton, a California attorney, have been targeted.
Spammers have also abused resources set up for purposes of anonymous speech online, such as anonymous remailers. As a result, many of these resources have been shut down, denying their utility to legitimate users.
E-mail worms or viruses may be spammed to set up an initial pool of infected machines, which then re-send the virus to other machines in a spam-like manner. The infected machines can often be used as remote-controlled zombie computers, for more conventional spamming or DDoS attacks. Sometimes trojans are spammed to phish for bank account details, or to set up a pool of zombies without using a virus.
Etymology
The term spam is derived from the Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where everything on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. While a customer plaintively asks for some kind of food without SPAM in it, the server reiterates the SPAM-filled menu. Soon, a chorus of Vikings join in with a song, repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM" and singing "lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM" over and over again, drowning out all conversation.
Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail (http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html) occurred in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other media, with the first recorded instance being on September 13th 1904 via telegram), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied. In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "SPAM" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. This act, previously termed flooding or trashing, came to be called spamming as well. [4] (http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=MAT.90Sep25210959%40zeus.organpipe.cs.arizona.edu) By analogy, the term was soon applied to any large amount of text broadcast by one user, or sometimes by many users.
It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting — the repeated posting of the same message. The first evident usage of this sense was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. Soon, this use had also become established — to spam Usenet was to flood newsgroups with junk messages.
Commercial spamming started in force on March 5, 1994 when a pair of lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, began using bulk Usenet posting to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the "Green Card spam", after the subject line of the postings. The two went on to widely promote spamming of both Usenet and e-mail as a new means of advertisement — over the objections of Internet users they labeled "anti-commerce radicals." Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and anti-spam efforts) moved chiefly to e-mail, where it remains today. [5] (http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html)
Alternate meanings
The term "spamming" is also used in the older sense of something repetitious and disruptive by players of first-person shooter computer games. In this sense it refers to "area denial" tactics—repeatedly firing rockets or other explosive shells into an area. Or to any tactic whereby a large volume of ammunition is expended in the hope of scoring a single hit.
Neither of these senses of the word imply that the "spamming" is abusive.
Costs of spam
Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. In addition, spam has costs stemming from the kinds of spam messages sent, from the ways spammers send them, and from the arms race between spammers and those who try to stop or control spam.
The methods of spammers are likewise costly. Because spamming contravenes the vast majority of ISPs' acceptable-use policies, most spammers have for many years gone to some trouble to conceal the origins of their spam. E-mail, Usenet, and instant-message spam are often sent through insecure proxy servers belonging to unwilling third parties. Spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. In some cases, they have used falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. This allows them to quickly move from one account to the next as each one is discovered and shut down by the host ISPs.
The costs of spam also can be taken to include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming. [9] (http://linxnet.com/misc/spam/thank_spammers.html)
Many users are bothered by spam because it impinges upon the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. Many also find the content of spam frequently offensive, in that pornography is one of the most frequently advertised products. Spammers send their spam largely indiscriminately, so pornographic ads may show up in a work place e-mail inbox — or a child's, the latter of which is illegal in many jurisdictions. Recently, there has been a noticable increase in spam advertising websites that contain child pornography.
Some spammers argue that most of these costs could potentially be alleviated by having spammers reimburse ISPs and individuals for their material. There are two problems with this logic: first, the rate of reimbursement they could credibly budget is unlikely to be nearly high enough to pay the cost; and second, the human cost (lost mail, lost time, and lost opportunities) is basically unrecoverable.
E-mail spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons: spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear the cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire email system, as operated in the past.
Since E-mail is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost sometimes provides a sufficient conversion rate to keep spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do a lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable.
Political issues
Spamming remains a hot discussion topic. In fact, many online users have even suggested (presumably jokingly) that cruel forms of capital punishment would be appropriate for spammers. In 2004, the seized Porsche of an indicted spammer was advertised on the internet, which revealed the extent of the financial rewards available to those who are willing to waste everybody's time and was a popular item because the car had been confiscated, which was seen as tough justice, but also sweet vengeance. However, some of the possible ways to stop spamming may lead to other side effects, such as increased government control over the Net, loss of privacy, barriers to free expression or commercialisation of e-mail.
One of the chief values favored by many long-time Internet users and experts, as well as by many members of the public, is the free exchange of ideas. Many have valued the relative anarchy of the Internet, and bridle at the idea of restrictions placed upon it. A common refrain from spam-fighters is that spamming itself abridges the historical freedom of the Internet, by attempting to force users to carry the costs of material which they would not choose.
An ongoing concern expressed by parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU has to do with so-called "stealth blocking", a term for ISPs employing aggressive spam blocking without their users' knowledge. These groups' concern is that ISPs or technicians seeking to reduce spam-related costs may select tools which (either through error or design) also block non-spam e-mail from sites seen as "spam-friendly". SPEWS is a common target of these criticisms. Few object to the existence of these tools; it is their use in filtering the mail of users who are not informed of their use which draws fire.
Some see spam-blocking tools as a threat to free expression — and laws against spamming as an untoward precedent for regulation or taxation of e-mail and the Internet at large. Even though it is to possible in some jurisdictions to treat some spam as unlawful merely by applying existing laws against trespass and conversion, some laws specifically targeting spam have been proposed. In 2004 United States passed the Can Spam Act of 2003 which provided ISPs and users with tools to combat spam. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head, reportedly one of the biggest spammers in the world, who settled the lawsuit for several thousand US dollars in June 2004. But the law is criticised by many for not being effective enough, and was even supported by some spammers and organizations which support spamming.
Flaming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.Flaming is the performance of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are often posted in response to flamebait.
Although face to face flaming is as old as time itself, flaming on the Internet started in the Usenet hierarchies. A flame may have elements of a normal message, but is distinguished by its intent. A flame is never intended to be constructive, to further clarify a discussion, or to persuade other people. The motive for flaming is never dialectic, but rather social or psychological. Flamers are attempting to assert their authority, or establish a position of superiority. Occasionally, flamers merely wish to upset and offend other members of the forum, in which case they are trolls.
Similarly, a normal, non-flame message may have elements of a flame – it may be hostile, for example – but it is not a flame if it is seriously intended to advance the discussion.
Flame wars
A flame war is a series of flaming messages in an electronic discussion group or message board system such as usenet, mailing lists or forums. There are a number of characteristics of electronic communication which have been cited as being conducive to flame wars. Electronic communications do not easily transmit facial expressions or voice intonations which may serve to moderate the tone of a message. Also, there is typically a lag time between the time a message is transmitted and the time a reply is read. These two characteristics can cause a "positive feedback loop" in which the emotional intensity of an electronic exchange increases to extremely high levels.
Alternatively, flame wars may be instigated deliberately by Internet trolls. Not all trolls are successful, though.
Jay W. Forrester described a phenomenon that often happens in flamewars whereby participants talk past each other. Each participant employs a different mental model (i.e. due to fundamental differences in their assumptions about what a particular word or concept means, they are actually discussing two different things).
Extended use of the term "flame war"
Sometimes, serious academic or technical disagreements online are described casually as "flame wars" even when the major participants are making useful and informative points and, largely, not flaming. This may have to do with the degree to which observers identify emotionally with the sides of the debate, or see esteemed leaders or role-models representing their own points of view powerfully.
For example, the Usenet discussion between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds on microkernel versus monolithic kernel operating system design has been described as a famous "flame war". Despite being designated a "flame war", the debate is quite informative: it has been studied by serious computer scientists and researchers, and continues to remain recommended and even required reading in courses on OS design and implementation.
Partly, terming such a discussion a "flame war" seems to be due to faulty or distorted memory of the discussion itself: it is easier to remember the (relatively few) insulting asides made -- such as Tanenbaum's comment that he would give Torvalds a poor grade for Linux's design -- than it is to remember the technical points. To continue the above example, Torvalds and Tanenbaum have both made it clear that they consider their famous discussion to have been mischaracterized.
Technical "advocacy" discussions, concerning the merits or flaws of a technology -- or especially of rival technologies -- can often seem "flamy" simply from the emotional intensity of hobbyists or professionals involved. Some have called the debates about the relative merits of Intel Pentium versus PowerPC, or Pentium 4 versus Athlon XP, or Microsoft Windows versus Mac OS X, or Apple's decision to go with NeXT over BeOS as "flame wars", even though the discussions are often highly technical and non-inflammatory.
Also, the debates on certain topics in theoretical physics, such as loop quantum gravity versus string theory between Lubos Motl and John Baez and Steve Carlip has been described by string theorist and Harvard professor of physics Lubos Molt as a "flame war" -- despite the fact that they were a source of fruitful articles on quasinormal modes of black hole physics.
Both professionals and hobbyists can be very passionate about certain topics in science, technology, and science fiction, but despite the debates being called "flame wars" the debates themselves are often very constructive. As a result, the older term holy war is also used in place of "flame war," depending on the user's preference.
It is also possible that the use of the term "flame war" for heated debates is used in anticipation of the debate becoming a actual flame war.
2. What are computer worms and viruses? Explain how they operate. Give examples.
In computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of the virus into a program is termed infection, and the infected file (or executable code that is not part of a file) is called a host. Viruses are one of the several types of malware or malicious software. In common parlance, the term virus is often extended to refer to computer worms and other sorts of malware. This can confuse computer users, since viruses in the narrow sense of the word are less common than they used to be, compared to other forms of malware such as worms. This confusion can have serious consequences, because it may lead to a focus on preventing one genre of malware over another, potentially leaving computers open for more damage.
While viruses can be intentionally destructive (for example, by destroying data), many other viruses are merely annoying. Some viruses have a delayed payload, which is sometimes called a bomb. For example, a virus might display a message on a specific day or wait until it has infected a certain number of hosts. However, the predominant negative effect of viruses is their uncontrolled self-reproduction, which wastes or overwhelms computer resources. Also, a piece of code that works without the knowledge of the recipient. It is transmitted inside other software, can duplicate itself, spread and damage your data and/or system. Viruses relies on human actions, such as sending email, sharing files, copying files from other computer to another. Without copying from other computer to another, without downloading files from the internet to your computer, without using a diskette coming from other computers, your computer or your files will be prevented from virus attack. While worms is able to do so independently, allowing it to spread much faster.
What's a "Virus"?
Viruses - A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.
Computer viruses are called viruses because they share some of the traits of biological viruses. A computer virus passes from computer to computer like a biological virus passes from person to person.
There are similarities at a deeper level, as well. A biological virus is not a living thing. A virus is a fragment of DNA inside a protective jacket. Unlike a cell, a virus has no way to do anything or to reproduce by itself -- it is not alive. Instead, a biological virus must inject its DNA into a cell. The viral DNA then uses the cell's existing machinery to reproduce itself. In some cases, the cell fills with new viral particles until it bursts, releasing the virus. In other cases, the new virus particles bud off the cell one at a time, and the cell remains alive.
A computer virus shares some of these traits. A computer virus must piggyback on top of some other program or document in order to get executed. Once it is running, it is then able to infect other programs or documents. Obviously, the analogy between computer and biological viruses stretches things a bit, but there are enough similarities that the name sticks.
• E-mail viruses - An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book.
What's a "Worm"?
A worm is a computer program that has the ability to copy itself from machine to machine. Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. For example, the Code Red worm replicated itself over 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001.
A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. For example, the Slammer worm (which caused mayhem in January 2003) exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL server. This article offers a fascinating look inside Slammer's tiny (376 byte) program.
•Worms - A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.
Trojan virus – My PC is infected by this virus. I used Penicilin 2002 before but then it doesn’t work. I get the virus from the diskette, but Penicilin 2002 does not trigger this out. That’s why all the diskette I’ve inserted in my Pc was lost. All files in Microsoft Word and Excel will have an extension of *.doc.exe and so on, after 25 seconds the file with that extension will automatically appeared and say it is “unknown file”, my computer does not recognize it, plus the file *.idd showed up. In which I don’t know *.idd file why it appears. The boot sector is infected, Virus and worms is unethical, my files in excel and word are damage. I just don’t know what programs or software to use just to take away this trojan virus.
3. Choose one example of computer abuse which you think is morally wrong. Explain why you consider it morally wrong using any of the ethical principles you have learned in the earlier modules.
Actually, I just believed that hacking is not merely bad. In some cases it is bad and morally wrong, like if you use this for theft of service. Through hacking you can withdraw money from the bank even it’s not yours using your ability to hack and that is morally bad. You must not do that. Because stealing violates the law in the land and the Divine Law which is the judge is God’s alone. The 2nd is, if we use this to take valuable files, just to compete with our competitors and see to it that my or your company is the best than the others. Actually most giant company have their own hackers, just to know others company on how they can be defeated. Which is as far as I know is morally bad. The 3rd is, if we use hacking for revenge which is also morally bad. The Bible said the vengeance is mine says the Lord. With this 3 cases, hacking is morally bad under all circumstances.
Spamming is the use of any electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages in bulk. In the popular eye, the most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form of commercial advertising. Sending bulk messages in this fashion, to recipients who have not solicited them, has come to be known as spamming, and the messages themselves as spam.Traditional advertising methods, such as billboards, TV or newspaper ads are similar to spam in that they are usually unsolicited and sent in bulk. Spamming has been considered by various commercial, government, and independent entities to be one of the foremost social problems facing electronic media today. While Flaming is the performance of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are often posted in response to flamebait. Also the sending of abusive email or messages to other people or newsgroup.
Types of Spamming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
E-mail spam is by far the most common form of spamming on the internet. It involves sending identical or nearly identical messages to a large number of recipients. Unlike legitimate commercial e-mail, spam is generally sent without the explicit permission of the recipients, and frequently contains various tricks to bypass e-mail filters.
Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply guessed by using common names and domains. By definition, spam is sent without the permission of the recipients.
Messaging spam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Messaging spam, sometimes called spim, is a type of spamming where the target is instant messaging services.Instant messaging (IM) systems are a popular target for spammers. Many IM systems offer a directory of users, including demographic information such as age and sex. Advertisers can gather this information, sign on to the system, and send unsolicited messages.
Newsgroup spam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Newsgroup spam is a type of spamming where the targets are Usenet newsgroups.
Spamming of Usenet newsgroups actually pre-dates email spam. The first widely recognized Usenet spam (though not the most famous) was posted on January 18, 1994 by Clarence L. Thomas IV, a sysadmin at Andrews University. Entitled "GlobalAlert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9401191510.AA18576%40jse.stat.ncsu.edu)", it was a fundamentalist religious tract claiming that "this world's history is coming to a climax." The newsgroup posting bot Serdar Argic also appeared in early 1994, posting tens of thousands of messages to various newsgroups, consisting of identical copies of a political screed relating to the Armenian Genocide.
Internet telephony spam
It has been predicted that voice over IP (VoIP) communications will be vulnerable to being spammed by pre-recorded messages. Although there have been few reported incidents, some companies have already tried to sell defenses against it. [2] (http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3398331)
Spamdexing or search engine spamming is the practice of deliberately and dishonestly modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results, or to influence the category to which the page is assigned in a dishonest manner. Many designers of web pages try to get a good ranking in search engines and design their pages accordingly. Spamdexing refers exclusively to practices that are dishonest and mislead search and indexing programs to give a page a ranking it does not deserve.
People who do this are called search engine spammers. The word is a portmanteau of "spamming" and "indexing".
Link spam (also called blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting weblogs (or blogs), but also affects wikis (where it is often called wikispam), guestbooks, and online discussion boards. Any web application that displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors or the referring URLs of web visitors may be a target.
Adding links that point to the spammer's web site increases the page rankings for the site in the search engine Google. An increased page rank means the spammer's commercial site would be listed ahead of other sites for certain Google searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers2.
Link spamming originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly fill a guestbook with links to their own site and no relevant comment to increase search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.
Wiki spam
Wikis are also a target of search engine spam, quite similar to blog spam. If you notice spamming/vandalism on this wiki please report it at Vandalism in progress.
Guestbook spam
Though more "old-school" than blogs or wikis, guestbooks are still present on some sites, and are subject to the same sorts of spam.
Referer spam
A spammer makes repeated web site requests using a fake referer url pointing to a spam-advertised site. Sites that publicize their referer statistics will then also link to the spammer's site. Main article: Referer spam
Mobile phone spam is a form of spamming directed at the text messaging service of a mobile phone. It is described as mobile spamming, sms spam, but is most frequently referred to as m-spam.
In 2002 and 2003, frequent users of cell phone text messages began to see an increase in the number of unsolicited (and generally unwanted) commercial advertisements being sent to their cell phones through text messaging.
In the United States, this use is regulated by the Can Spam Act of 2003.
Often these messages consist of a simple request to call a number. Normal mobile phone etiquette often results in the call being returned by the user. When they then return the call, they are unaware that they have been fraudulently induced to call a premium-rate line. There is frequently an attempt to get them to hold on the line for as long as possible in order to maximise revenue from this fraud.
Another form of mobile phone fraud is the one-ring fraud, where an incoming call to a mobile phone is timed such that it will ring once, and then cut off before the user can answer. This leaves the missed call number on their phone, and the rest of the fraud is as above. In this case, it is the (real or apparent) calling number details which are being spammed to the phone, as these calls are made in their hundreds of thousands by autodialers at little or no cost to the originator, as there is no charge for calls which do not connect.
Both of these frauds can be combined with other frauds such as the advance fee fraud, as they act as a pre-screening stage for fraudsters to capture the telephone numbers of particularly trusting individuals.
Commercial uses
The most common purpose for spamming is advertising. Goods commonly advertised in spam include pornography, computer software, medical products such as Viagra, credit card accounts, and fad products. In part because of the bad reputation (and dubious legal status) which spamming carries, it is chiefly used to carry offers of an ill-reputed or questionably legal nature. Many of the products advertised in spam are fraudulent in nature, such as quack medications and get-rich-quick schemes. Spam is frequently used to advertise scams, such as diploma mills, advance fee fraud, pyramid schemes, stock pump-and-dump schemes and password phishing. It is also often used to advertise pornography indiscriminately, even in jurisdictions where it is illegal to transmit pornographic solicitations to minor children, or even for anyone to view it at all.
The use of spamming in other countries is often different. For example, in Russia spamming is commonly used by many mainstream legitimate businesses, such as travel agencies, printing shops, training centres, real estate agencies, seminar and conference organisers and even self-employed electricians and garbage collection companies. In fact, the most prominent Russian spammer was American English Center, a language school in Moscow. That spamming sparked a powerful anti-spam movement, including enraging the deputy minister of communications Andrey Korotkov and provoked a wave of counter attacks on the spammer through non-internet channels, including a massive telephone DDOS attack.
Comparison to postal "junk" mail
There are a number of differences between spam and junk mail:
• Unlike junk postal mail, the costs of spam paid for by the recipient's mail site commonly approach or even exceed those of the sender, in terms of bandwidth, CPU processing time, and storage space. Spammers frequently use free dial-up accounts, so their costs may be quite minimal indeed. Because of this offloading of costs onto the recipient, many consider spamming to be theft or criminal conversion.
• Junk mail can be said to subsidize the delivery of mail customers want to receive. For example, the United States Postal Service allows bulk mail senders to pay a lower rate than for first-class mail, because they are required to sort their mailings and apply bar codes, which makes their mail much cheaper to process. While some ISPs receive large fees from spammers, most do not — and most pay the costs of carrying or filtering unwanted spam.
• Another distinction is that the costs of sending junk mail provide incentives to be somewhat selective about recipients, whereas the spammer has much lower costs, and therefore much less incentive.
• Finally, bulk mail is by and large used by businesses who are traceable and can be held responsible for what they send. Spammers frequently operate on a fly-by-night basis, using the so-called "anarchy" of the Internet as a cover.
Non-commercial spam
E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political in nature. Serdar Argic, for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages.
Spamming has also been used as a denial of service tactic, particularly on Usenet. By overwhelming the readers of a newsgroup with an inordinate number of nonsense messages, legitimate messages can be lost and computing resources are consumed. Since these messages are usually forged (that is, sent falsely under regular posters' names) this tactic has come to be known as sporgery (from spam + forgery). This tactic has for instance been used by partisans of the Church of Scientology against the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup (see Scientology vs. the Internet) and by spammers against news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail, a forum for mail administrators to discuss spam problems. Applied to e-mail, this is termed mailbombing.
In a handful of cases, forged e-mail spam has been used as a tool of harassment. The spammer collects a list of addresses as usual, then sends a spam to them signed with the name of the person he wishes to harass. Some recipients, angry that they received spam and seeing an obvious "source", will respond angrily or pursue various sorts of revenge against the apparent spammer, the forgery victim. A widely known victim of this sort of harassment was Joe's CyberPost (http://joes.com/), which has lent its name to the offense: it is known as a joe job. Such joe jobs have been most often used against anti-spammers: in more recent examples, Steve Linford of Spamhaus Project and Timothy Walton, a California attorney, have been targeted.
Spammers have also abused resources set up for purposes of anonymous speech online, such as anonymous remailers. As a result, many of these resources have been shut down, denying their utility to legitimate users.
E-mail worms or viruses may be spammed to set up an initial pool of infected machines, which then re-send the virus to other machines in a spam-like manner. The infected machines can often be used as remote-controlled zombie computers, for more conventional spamming or DDoS attacks. Sometimes trojans are spammed to phish for bank account details, or to set up a pool of zombies without using a virus.
Etymology
The term spam is derived from the Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where everything on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. While a customer plaintively asks for some kind of food without SPAM in it, the server reiterates the SPAM-filled menu. Soon, a chorus of Vikings join in with a song, repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM" and singing "lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM" over and over again, drowning out all conversation.
Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail (http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html) occurred in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other media, with the first recorded instance being on September 13th 1904 via telegram), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied. In the 1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "SPAM" a huge number of times to scroll other users' text off the screen. This act, previously termed flooding or trashing, came to be called spamming as well. [4] (http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=MAT.90Sep25210959%40zeus.organpipe.cs.arizona.edu) By analogy, the term was soon applied to any large amount of text broadcast by one user, or sometimes by many users.
It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting — the repeated posting of the same message. The first evident usage of this sense was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. Soon, this use had also become established — to spam Usenet was to flood newsgroups with junk messages.
Commercial spamming started in force on March 5, 1994 when a pair of lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, began using bulk Usenet posting to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the "Green Card spam", after the subject line of the postings. The two went on to widely promote spamming of both Usenet and e-mail as a new means of advertisement — over the objections of Internet users they labeled "anti-commerce radicals." Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and anti-spam efforts) moved chiefly to e-mail, where it remains today. [5] (http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html)
Alternate meanings
The term "spamming" is also used in the older sense of something repetitious and disruptive by players of first-person shooter computer games. In this sense it refers to "area denial" tactics—repeatedly firing rockets or other explosive shells into an area. Or to any tactic whereby a large volume of ammunition is expended in the hope of scoring a single hit.
Neither of these senses of the word imply that the "spamming" is abusive.
Costs of spam
Spam's direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. In addition, spam has costs stemming from the kinds of spam messages sent, from the ways spammers send them, and from the arms race between spammers and those who try to stop or control spam.
The methods of spammers are likewise costly. Because spamming contravenes the vast majority of ISPs' acceptable-use policies, most spammers have for many years gone to some trouble to conceal the origins of their spam. E-mail, Usenet, and instant-message spam are often sent through insecure proxy servers belonging to unwilling third parties. Spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. In some cases, they have used falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. This allows them to quickly move from one account to the next as each one is discovered and shut down by the host ISPs.
The costs of spam also can be taken to include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming. [9] (http://linxnet.com/misc/spam/thank_spammers.html)
Many users are bothered by spam because it impinges upon the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. Many also find the content of spam frequently offensive, in that pornography is one of the most frequently advertised products. Spammers send their spam largely indiscriminately, so pornographic ads may show up in a work place e-mail inbox — or a child's, the latter of which is illegal in many jurisdictions. Recently, there has been a noticable increase in spam advertising websites that contain child pornography.
Some spammers argue that most of these costs could potentially be alleviated by having spammers reimburse ISPs and individuals for their material. There are two problems with this logic: first, the rate of reimbursement they could credibly budget is unlikely to be nearly high enough to pay the cost; and second, the human cost (lost mail, lost time, and lost opportunities) is basically unrecoverable.
E-mail spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons: spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear the cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire email system, as operated in the past.
Since E-mail is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost sometimes provides a sufficient conversion rate to keep spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do a lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable.
Political issues
Spamming remains a hot discussion topic. In fact, many online users have even suggested (presumably jokingly) that cruel forms of capital punishment would be appropriate for spammers. In 2004, the seized Porsche of an indicted spammer was advertised on the internet, which revealed the extent of the financial rewards available to those who are willing to waste everybody's time and was a popular item because the car had been confiscated, which was seen as tough justice, but also sweet vengeance. However, some of the possible ways to stop spamming may lead to other side effects, such as increased government control over the Net, loss of privacy, barriers to free expression or commercialisation of e-mail.
One of the chief values favored by many long-time Internet users and experts, as well as by many members of the public, is the free exchange of ideas. Many have valued the relative anarchy of the Internet, and bridle at the idea of restrictions placed upon it. A common refrain from spam-fighters is that spamming itself abridges the historical freedom of the Internet, by attempting to force users to carry the costs of material which they would not choose.
An ongoing concern expressed by parties such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU has to do with so-called "stealth blocking", a term for ISPs employing aggressive spam blocking without their users' knowledge. These groups' concern is that ISPs or technicians seeking to reduce spam-related costs may select tools which (either through error or design) also block non-spam e-mail from sites seen as "spam-friendly". SPEWS is a common target of these criticisms. Few object to the existence of these tools; it is their use in filtering the mail of users who are not informed of their use which draws fire.
Some see spam-blocking tools as a threat to free expression — and laws against spamming as an untoward precedent for regulation or taxation of e-mail and the Internet at large. Even though it is to possible in some jurisdictions to treat some spam as unlawful merely by applying existing laws against trespass and conversion, some laws specifically targeting spam have been proposed. In 2004 United States passed the Can Spam Act of 2003 which provided ISPs and users with tools to combat spam. This act allowed Yahoo! to successfully sue Eric Head, reportedly one of the biggest spammers in the world, who settled the lawsuit for several thousand US dollars in June 2004. But the law is criticised by many for not being effective enough, and was even supported by some spammers and organizations which support spamming.
Flaming
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.Flaming is the performance of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting in the social context of a discussion board (usually on the Internet). Such messages are called flames, and are often posted in response to flamebait.
Although face to face flaming is as old as time itself, flaming on the Internet started in the Usenet hierarchies. A flame may have elements of a normal message, but is distinguished by its intent. A flame is never intended to be constructive, to further clarify a discussion, or to persuade other people. The motive for flaming is never dialectic, but rather social or psychological. Flamers are attempting to assert their authority, or establish a position of superiority. Occasionally, flamers merely wish to upset and offend other members of the forum, in which case they are trolls.
Similarly, a normal, non-flame message may have elements of a flame – it may be hostile, for example – but it is not a flame if it is seriously intended to advance the discussion.
Flame wars
A flame war is a series of flaming messages in an electronic discussion group or message board system such as usenet, mailing lists or forums. There are a number of characteristics of electronic communication which have been cited as being conducive to flame wars. Electronic communications do not easily transmit facial expressions or voice intonations which may serve to moderate the tone of a message. Also, there is typically a lag time between the time a message is transmitted and the time a reply is read. These two characteristics can cause a "positive feedback loop" in which the emotional intensity of an electronic exchange increases to extremely high levels.
Alternatively, flame wars may be instigated deliberately by Internet trolls. Not all trolls are successful, though.
Jay W. Forrester described a phenomenon that often happens in flamewars whereby participants talk past each other. Each participant employs a different mental model (i.e. due to fundamental differences in their assumptions about what a particular word or concept means, they are actually discussing two different things).
Extended use of the term "flame war"
Sometimes, serious academic or technical disagreements online are described casually as "flame wars" even when the major participants are making useful and informative points and, largely, not flaming. This may have to do with the degree to which observers identify emotionally with the sides of the debate, or see esteemed leaders or role-models representing their own points of view powerfully.
For example, the Usenet discussion between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds on microkernel versus monolithic kernel operating system design has been described as a famous "flame war". Despite being designated a "flame war", the debate is quite informative: it has been studied by serious computer scientists and researchers, and continues to remain recommended and even required reading in courses on OS design and implementation.
Partly, terming such a discussion a "flame war" seems to be due to faulty or distorted memory of the discussion itself: it is easier to remember the (relatively few) insulting asides made -- such as Tanenbaum's comment that he would give Torvalds a poor grade for Linux's design -- than it is to remember the technical points. To continue the above example, Torvalds and Tanenbaum have both made it clear that they consider their famous discussion to have been mischaracterized.
Technical "advocacy" discussions, concerning the merits or flaws of a technology -- or especially of rival technologies -- can often seem "flamy" simply from the emotional intensity of hobbyists or professionals involved. Some have called the debates about the relative merits of Intel Pentium versus PowerPC, or Pentium 4 versus Athlon XP, or Microsoft Windows versus Mac OS X, or Apple's decision to go with NeXT over BeOS as "flame wars", even though the discussions are often highly technical and non-inflammatory.
Also, the debates on certain topics in theoretical physics, such as loop quantum gravity versus string theory between Lubos Motl and John Baez and Steve Carlip has been described by string theorist and Harvard professor of physics Lubos Molt as a "flame war" -- despite the fact that they were a source of fruitful articles on quasinormal modes of black hole physics.
Both professionals and hobbyists can be very passionate about certain topics in science, technology, and science fiction, but despite the debates being called "flame wars" the debates themselves are often very constructive. As a result, the older term holy war is also used in place of "flame war," depending on the user's preference.
It is also possible that the use of the term "flame war" for heated debates is used in anticipation of the debate becoming a actual flame war.
2. What are computer worms and viruses? Explain how they operate. Give examples.
In computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of the virus into a program is termed infection, and the infected file (or executable code that is not part of a file) is called a host. Viruses are one of the several types of malware or malicious software. In common parlance, the term virus is often extended to refer to computer worms and other sorts of malware. This can confuse computer users, since viruses in the narrow sense of the word are less common than they used to be, compared to other forms of malware such as worms. This confusion can have serious consequences, because it may lead to a focus on preventing one genre of malware over another, potentially leaving computers open for more damage.
While viruses can be intentionally destructive (for example, by destroying data), many other viruses are merely annoying. Some viruses have a delayed payload, which is sometimes called a bomb. For example, a virus might display a message on a specific day or wait until it has infected a certain number of hosts. However, the predominant negative effect of viruses is their uncontrolled self-reproduction, which wastes or overwhelms computer resources. Also, a piece of code that works without the knowledge of the recipient. It is transmitted inside other software, can duplicate itself, spread and damage your data and/or system. Viruses relies on human actions, such as sending email, sharing files, copying files from other computer to another. Without copying from other computer to another, without downloading files from the internet to your computer, without using a diskette coming from other computers, your computer or your files will be prevented from virus attack. While worms is able to do so independently, allowing it to spread much faster.
What's a "Virus"?
Viruses - A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.
Computer viruses are called viruses because they share some of the traits of biological viruses. A computer virus passes from computer to computer like a biological virus passes from person to person.
There are similarities at a deeper level, as well. A biological virus is not a living thing. A virus is a fragment of DNA inside a protective jacket. Unlike a cell, a virus has no way to do anything or to reproduce by itself -- it is not alive. Instead, a biological virus must inject its DNA into a cell. The viral DNA then uses the cell's existing machinery to reproduce itself. In some cases, the cell fills with new viral particles until it bursts, releasing the virus. In other cases, the new virus particles bud off the cell one at a time, and the cell remains alive.
A computer virus shares some of these traits. A computer virus must piggyback on top of some other program or document in order to get executed. Once it is running, it is then able to infect other programs or documents. Obviously, the analogy between computer and biological viruses stretches things a bit, but there are enough similarities that the name sticks.
• E-mail viruses - An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book.
What's a "Worm"?
A worm is a computer program that has the ability to copy itself from machine to machine. Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. For example, the Code Red worm replicated itself over 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001.
A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. For example, the Slammer worm (which caused mayhem in January 2003) exploited a hole in Microsoft's SQL server. This article offers a fascinating look inside Slammer's tiny (376 byte) program.
•Worms - A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.
Trojan virus – My PC is infected by this virus. I used Penicilin 2002 before but then it doesn’t work. I get the virus from the diskette, but Penicilin 2002 does not trigger this out. That’s why all the diskette I’ve inserted in my Pc was lost. All files in Microsoft Word and Excel will have an extension of *.doc.exe and so on, after 25 seconds the file with that extension will automatically appeared and say it is “unknown file”, my computer does not recognize it, plus the file *.idd showed up. In which I don’t know *.idd file why it appears. The boot sector is infected, Virus and worms is unethical, my files in excel and word are damage. I just don’t know what programs or software to use just to take away this trojan virus.
3. Choose one example of computer abuse which you think is morally wrong. Explain why you consider it morally wrong using any of the ethical principles you have learned in the earlier modules.
Actually, I just believed that hacking is not merely bad. In some cases it is bad and morally wrong, like if you use this for theft of service. Through hacking you can withdraw money from the bank even it’s not yours using your ability to hack and that is morally bad. You must not do that. Because stealing violates the law in the land and the Divine Law which is the judge is God’s alone. The 2nd is, if we use this to take valuable files, just to compete with our competitors and see to it that my or your company is the best than the others. Actually most giant company have their own hackers, just to know others company on how they can be defeated. Which is as far as I know is morally bad. The 3rd is, if we use hacking for revenge which is also morally bad. The Bible said the vengeance is mine says the Lord. With this 3 cases, hacking is morally bad under all circumstances.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Saq6: Computer Ethics
A.1. Which of the 10 commandments on computer use did Daan violate?
Daan violates “Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization”, “Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work”, Thou shall not snoop around in other people’s files”, “Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid,” “Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization,” and “Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect.”
2. If you were Daan, will you tell Kael the truth or not? Explain.
There’s no secret that cannot be revealed & there’s no problem that cannot be solved. How long will I kept the secret? The more I keep it, the more it will be hard for me to tell the truth and the more our friendship will be endangered. My conscience will be my enemy. I know the truth will set me free. That’s why I must tell the truth as soon as possible. I know he will understand me. If ever Kael hates me, even I say sorry, then it’s up to Kael. I have done my part. I know at the right time he will forgive me. I must wait for that time. Plus I need to be prepared on what he will say and what he will do to me. If he will mock me, then it’s alright. I understand it’s my fault. Plus I will tell him that I will buy new computer mother board for him for the replacement of the damage I’ve done.
3. If you were Kael and Daan told you the truth, what will you do?
If I was Kael and Daan told me the truth in that particular time, I will be disappointed and I will be mad at him. Maybe I’m going to release my punch and mocked him and say, “PARE” why did you do this to me. Why you don’t tell me about your discoveries before you installed it to my computer? You need my permission first before doing this. After that, I will go to my house and I will not talk to him until he finally knows that what he’s done is really wrong and unethical. Daan must see to it that he is really sorry for what happen. Well, that’s case to case basis. If I see that Daan is really sorry for what happen, I will hug and embrace him, then I will really forgive him instantly and say don’t do this again. But I will tell him that because of what he’s done, he must give me a share to buy new computer mother board, after all where friends. My 2nd impression is that I will be proud of him and I will say “you’re the man”. You’re so patient and intelligent in discovering new ideas. But I will tell my friend Daan that he must understand that everything here in the world has a limitation. Don’t do bad things that will cause him to be in trouble. What you do to my computer mother board is enough? Don’t install it to anybody again.
B. Pick three of the precepts on computer use discussed above and briefly explains each precept in terms of the theory of ethics and the ethical concepts (discussed in Modules 1-4) that underpin it.
“Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people”.
Pornography is a good example of this commandment. Nowadays, pornography in the internet is very common; abusing the rights of women, even you don’t browse the website of it and it will automatically appear. Indeed, pornography is bad under all circumstances. It violates the natural law, moral law and most of all the divine law. Users must not use the computer just to gain personal satisfaction and personal happiness and yet somebody will be harmed. Users must see to it that all his explorations and discoveries will not greatly affect or harm others.
“Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.” Stealing one’s property is bad under all circumstances. Again it violates the moral law, the natural law and the Divine law. Yes, you will be rich if you steal because you gain money from others. You can buy anything you want, just to gain personal happiness and satisfaction. But after that, are you satisfied? Do you find the true happiness? Impact, stealing ones property is dangerous. Wealth and richness is good, it makes us happy. But the love of money is the fruit of all evil. The love of money is the key for us to be in hell. Humans loved money so much, that’s why, even their soul will die and perish it’s alright with them. They don’t know that there will be a judgment when they die. My question is that why people are not satisfied to what they have right now? Why do they steal? Yes, you have the property, the money that you can buy, but your home is lost and no harmony at all. So what’s the point of having all the richness? It’s useless. “You can’t be with your money if you die”.
“Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization.”
Hacking is a good example of this commandment and at the same time the case of Daan. Daan loves to surf the Internet and try all available applications. One of his exploration, he discovered a virus that destroy computer mother board. To test his discovery he installed it to the computer of his friends without permission. This situation illustrates, that what he’s action is morally bad but good under certain circumstances. I don’t see bad things in explorations, in discovering new ideas and try all available applications if it works. For me it’s good, because it will increase your knowledge. There’s new innovation in exploring and surfing the net. But what is bad in this illustration is that Daan surreptitiously installed the virus in his friends PC. He does not ask permission to his friends which is morally bad under all circumstances. Hacking for me is not really bad if you will just use it for new idea, but if it is abusive and destructive, then, it is morally bad under all circumstances.
C. Cite two ethical issues in computing. Explain how they are ethical in nature.
Privacy in Computing such as email privacy, database privacy, software privacy and others are ethical in nature. Many laws and policies have created to protect the users, ones they entered in the computer world or ones they access the said website or the World Wide Web (WWW). See Privacy Act http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/552a.html. Privacy in computing is ethical in nature because they protect the user rights. The rights that the file, databases and others remain private. The law implies that the user must respect the rights of other users by not snooping around in others files. Privacy in computing is the same as you owned a house and someone, “a stranger” went to your house without informing you. We called that trespassing. Privacy in computing is a sense of ownership. One’s you have email address, files, website and others, it is yours. You’re the owner of it, and no one must bypass. It is your private property.
Integrity in creating computer programs is ethical in nature. Meaning all programmers can designed and create programs that will benefit the society. “Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write.” Designer and programmers must design and create only program that will be useful, that it will not harm anybody else. That computer programmers will not create worms and viruses that really affect and damage ones property.
D. As a computer user, do you approve of an ordering principle, in the form of legislation, being formulated and enforced to govern computer use? Why? Defend your answer.
Actually my answer is no and yes. I’m in the middle. No because we have the freedom to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t infringe intellectual property of someone else and as long as were not violating any law. Plus the scope of legislation is too big; how come the system administrators will detect those people who violate the law in computing? I just think that the scope is too big and the task is too difficult to do.
Yes, so that the user will be informed that there is a law in the land. The user will have fear, that in their mind if ever you do this or do that, which is wrong, and then they trace you, you will be punishable. “You will be in jail”. So I just think it is also good to have an ordering principle in the form of legislation. So that abusing someone rights, infringement of intellectual property will be lessen.
Daan violates “Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization”, “Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work”, Thou shall not snoop around in other people’s files”, “Thou shalt not use or copy software for which you have not paid,” “Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization,” and “Thou shalt use a computer in ways that show consideration and respect.”
2. If you were Daan, will you tell Kael the truth or not? Explain.
There’s no secret that cannot be revealed & there’s no problem that cannot be solved. How long will I kept the secret? The more I keep it, the more it will be hard for me to tell the truth and the more our friendship will be endangered. My conscience will be my enemy. I know the truth will set me free. That’s why I must tell the truth as soon as possible. I know he will understand me. If ever Kael hates me, even I say sorry, then it’s up to Kael. I have done my part. I know at the right time he will forgive me. I must wait for that time. Plus I need to be prepared on what he will say and what he will do to me. If he will mock me, then it’s alright. I understand it’s my fault. Plus I will tell him that I will buy new computer mother board for him for the replacement of the damage I’ve done.
3. If you were Kael and Daan told you the truth, what will you do?
If I was Kael and Daan told me the truth in that particular time, I will be disappointed and I will be mad at him. Maybe I’m going to release my punch and mocked him and say, “PARE” why did you do this to me. Why you don’t tell me about your discoveries before you installed it to my computer? You need my permission first before doing this. After that, I will go to my house and I will not talk to him until he finally knows that what he’s done is really wrong and unethical. Daan must see to it that he is really sorry for what happen. Well, that’s case to case basis. If I see that Daan is really sorry for what happen, I will hug and embrace him, then I will really forgive him instantly and say don’t do this again. But I will tell him that because of what he’s done, he must give me a share to buy new computer mother board, after all where friends. My 2nd impression is that I will be proud of him and I will say “you’re the man”. You’re so patient and intelligent in discovering new ideas. But I will tell my friend Daan that he must understand that everything here in the world has a limitation. Don’t do bad things that will cause him to be in trouble. What you do to my computer mother board is enough? Don’t install it to anybody again.
B. Pick three of the precepts on computer use discussed above and briefly explains each precept in terms of the theory of ethics and the ethical concepts (discussed in Modules 1-4) that underpin it.
“Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people”.
Pornography is a good example of this commandment. Nowadays, pornography in the internet is very common; abusing the rights of women, even you don’t browse the website of it and it will automatically appear. Indeed, pornography is bad under all circumstances. It violates the natural law, moral law and most of all the divine law. Users must not use the computer just to gain personal satisfaction and personal happiness and yet somebody will be harmed. Users must see to it that all his explorations and discoveries will not greatly affect or harm others.
“Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.” Stealing one’s property is bad under all circumstances. Again it violates the moral law, the natural law and the Divine law. Yes, you will be rich if you steal because you gain money from others. You can buy anything you want, just to gain personal happiness and satisfaction. But after that, are you satisfied? Do you find the true happiness? Impact, stealing ones property is dangerous. Wealth and richness is good, it makes us happy. But the love of money is the fruit of all evil. The love of money is the key for us to be in hell. Humans loved money so much, that’s why, even their soul will die and perish it’s alright with them. They don’t know that there will be a judgment when they die. My question is that why people are not satisfied to what they have right now? Why do they steal? Yes, you have the property, the money that you can buy, but your home is lost and no harmony at all. So what’s the point of having all the richness? It’s useless. “You can’t be with your money if you die”.
“Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization.”
Hacking is a good example of this commandment and at the same time the case of Daan. Daan loves to surf the Internet and try all available applications. One of his exploration, he discovered a virus that destroy computer mother board. To test his discovery he installed it to the computer of his friends without permission. This situation illustrates, that what he’s action is morally bad but good under certain circumstances. I don’t see bad things in explorations, in discovering new ideas and try all available applications if it works. For me it’s good, because it will increase your knowledge. There’s new innovation in exploring and surfing the net. But what is bad in this illustration is that Daan surreptitiously installed the virus in his friends PC. He does not ask permission to his friends which is morally bad under all circumstances. Hacking for me is not really bad if you will just use it for new idea, but if it is abusive and destructive, then, it is morally bad under all circumstances.
C. Cite two ethical issues in computing. Explain how they are ethical in nature.
Privacy in Computing such as email privacy, database privacy, software privacy and others are ethical in nature. Many laws and policies have created to protect the users, ones they entered in the computer world or ones they access the said website or the World Wide Web (WWW). See Privacy Act http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/552a.html. Privacy in computing is ethical in nature because they protect the user rights. The rights that the file, databases and others remain private. The law implies that the user must respect the rights of other users by not snooping around in others files. Privacy in computing is the same as you owned a house and someone, “a stranger” went to your house without informing you. We called that trespassing. Privacy in computing is a sense of ownership. One’s you have email address, files, website and others, it is yours. You’re the owner of it, and no one must bypass. It is your private property.
Integrity in creating computer programs is ethical in nature. Meaning all programmers can designed and create programs that will benefit the society. “Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you write.” Designer and programmers must design and create only program that will be useful, that it will not harm anybody else. That computer programmers will not create worms and viruses that really affect and damage ones property.
D. As a computer user, do you approve of an ordering principle, in the form of legislation, being formulated and enforced to govern computer use? Why? Defend your answer.
Actually my answer is no and yes. I’m in the middle. No because we have the freedom to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t infringe intellectual property of someone else and as long as were not violating any law. Plus the scope of legislation is too big; how come the system administrators will detect those people who violate the law in computing? I just think that the scope is too big and the task is too difficult to do.
Yes, so that the user will be informed that there is a law in the land. The user will have fear, that in their mind if ever you do this or do that, which is wrong, and then they trace you, you will be punishable. “You will be in jail”. So I just think it is also good to have an ordering principle in the form of legislation. So that abusing someone rights, infringement of intellectual property will be lessen.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Saq5: Moral Problems
And he said a certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck; and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead; and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
You became the chief of police in your place after successfully going after big time computer hackers and a syndicate engaged in the production and sale pf pirated software. One day, you find out that your eldest son is an active computer hacker. When you confront your son, he tells you that he is sorry and he promises that he will never engage in activities involving computer crimes. You are now face with the problem of having to choose between too options: first as a chief of police, you have a duty to arrest your own son; and second, as a parent you have the duty to protect your son.
In every family there is always a black sheep or what we called “different” but although their sons and daughters committed “sin” there is always forgiveness. True Repentance is the key for forgiveness. Whatever bad things that your sons did, it will be forgiven because a father has always a compassion for it. It is not wrong to protect your son. Nor it is not wrong to do your duty as a chief of police. But what ever decision he has now, it must be clearly understood that he will need to sacrifice one. He must choose His own son or the lost of his job. The chief of police must suffer for what decision or consequence he has made. If he will be in the position as a chief police then he must do his job. And that job is to arrest those hackers and syndicate including his own son. Yes, the sin of his son is forgiven as a parent but there is law that guilty person must be charged. In most studies those sons and daughters doing criminal cases like this are those people that lack attention and parental guidance. That’s why they act rebelliously. But as I’ve said parent have a compassion to there son. In reality I don’t see people, famous one, son and daughter of the President or sons of “Pontius Pilate” that is persecuted and accused by his own parent although they have sinned against the government law like in this case. Most cases, those sons of the famous one or those sons of politicians although they have sinned and guilty they went to America just to be safe and not to be accused. Well, I’m not saying that I will tolerate my son. But now this is the reality. Your son is your own blood. Even it is the most wanted criminal syndicate here in the Philippines forgiveness and compassion will come on your way. Yes position, dignity and pride are important. You hardly invest it just to gain the fame and fortune of your family. But if your son will perish I don’t really think the position as a Chief of Police is important right now. But if my son after committing a sin, he is forgiven and then it turns out that his action is not true or just a fake one and he is not truly repenting then I will punish him. Repentance means you will not turn back and you will not do bad things again. So if you will do it again, then, forgiveness is not for you. Forgiveness is only for those people who truly repent. This situation illustrates the problem of moral obligation and the problem of moral principle. If you will perform your work as a chief of police then you will gain respect and fame. But your duty as parent will be questionable, your son will be in jail and that is too painful in to your other side.
The problem of moral obligation and the problem of moral principle is the most pervasive among the four. This two involved choosing what is wrong and what is right. If you think that is right, one will suffer and you must sacrifice one. Meaning you must eliminate one. I just have a question why I need to choose? I just think I need them both. I need my friend to be with me but I also need a job. My job is my bread and butter. So what’s the point of choosing? Both are important. Well, I just think I must discern the right things. Discerning what is wrong and what is right. Talking the problem of moral principle, will discussed the 1st scenario. I’m a computer specialist employed in HRD. I’m responsible for safekeeping and updating computer records of employees that’s why the documents under me are highly confidential. But my friend who is employed in the same company needs favor from me and that is to give her the records of a doctor. What will I do? Well, I will tell to my friends that doing these things is merely bad. I need to make her a point that what she’s doing will cause them both out to the company. My friend needs to understand these things, if that is confidential then it must be confidential. But if my friends don’t understand me then it’s up to her. Well, it’s too hard if you have “Utang na Loob” to those people who need favor from you, it’s too hard to say no. That “Utang na Loob” makes me sick. It is your obligation in return to give them favor too, but see to it you will not be in trouble. But in reality if you have “Utang na Loob” in somebody it will cause you in trouble, not just trouble but in pain. That is very bad. If you think that “Utang na Loob” will harm you then don’t do it. May be there is another chance to give them favor. If your conscience and your heart is telling you it is wrong, and it is against your moral principle then don’t do it. If I’m a computer programmer who is being asked by my employer to create a program that would sabotage a competitors computer system then what will I do is to resigned because it’s against my principle. Well, I think it’s upon the person who is in that situation. But for me if it is against my belief, then I will stop for it. I will resign for that job because there are many best jobs. If it is against your will don’t do it.
You became the chief of police in your place after successfully going after big time computer hackers and a syndicate engaged in the production and sale pf pirated software. One day, you find out that your eldest son is an active computer hacker. When you confront your son, he tells you that he is sorry and he promises that he will never engage in activities involving computer crimes. You are now face with the problem of having to choose between too options: first as a chief of police, you have a duty to arrest your own son; and second, as a parent you have the duty to protect your son.
In every family there is always a black sheep or what we called “different” but although their sons and daughters committed “sin” there is always forgiveness. True Repentance is the key for forgiveness. Whatever bad things that your sons did, it will be forgiven because a father has always a compassion for it. It is not wrong to protect your son. Nor it is not wrong to do your duty as a chief of police. But what ever decision he has now, it must be clearly understood that he will need to sacrifice one. He must choose His own son or the lost of his job. The chief of police must suffer for what decision or consequence he has made. If he will be in the position as a chief police then he must do his job. And that job is to arrest those hackers and syndicate including his own son. Yes, the sin of his son is forgiven as a parent but there is law that guilty person must be charged. In most studies those sons and daughters doing criminal cases like this are those people that lack attention and parental guidance. That’s why they act rebelliously. But as I’ve said parent have a compassion to there son. In reality I don’t see people, famous one, son and daughter of the President or sons of “Pontius Pilate” that is persecuted and accused by his own parent although they have sinned against the government law like in this case. Most cases, those sons of the famous one or those sons of politicians although they have sinned and guilty they went to America just to be safe and not to be accused. Well, I’m not saying that I will tolerate my son. But now this is the reality. Your son is your own blood. Even it is the most wanted criminal syndicate here in the Philippines forgiveness and compassion will come on your way. Yes position, dignity and pride are important. You hardly invest it just to gain the fame and fortune of your family. But if your son will perish I don’t really think the position as a Chief of Police is important right now. But if my son after committing a sin, he is forgiven and then it turns out that his action is not true or just a fake one and he is not truly repenting then I will punish him. Repentance means you will not turn back and you will not do bad things again. So if you will do it again, then, forgiveness is not for you. Forgiveness is only for those people who truly repent. This situation illustrates the problem of moral obligation and the problem of moral principle. If you will perform your work as a chief of police then you will gain respect and fame. But your duty as parent will be questionable, your son will be in jail and that is too painful in to your other side.
The problem of moral obligation and the problem of moral principle is the most pervasive among the four. This two involved choosing what is wrong and what is right. If you think that is right, one will suffer and you must sacrifice one. Meaning you must eliminate one. I just have a question why I need to choose? I just think I need them both. I need my friend to be with me but I also need a job. My job is my bread and butter. So what’s the point of choosing? Both are important. Well, I just think I must discern the right things. Discerning what is wrong and what is right. Talking the problem of moral principle, will discussed the 1st scenario. I’m a computer specialist employed in HRD. I’m responsible for safekeeping and updating computer records of employees that’s why the documents under me are highly confidential. But my friend who is employed in the same company needs favor from me and that is to give her the records of a doctor. What will I do? Well, I will tell to my friends that doing these things is merely bad. I need to make her a point that what she’s doing will cause them both out to the company. My friend needs to understand these things, if that is confidential then it must be confidential. But if my friends don’t understand me then it’s up to her. Well, it’s too hard if you have “Utang na Loob” to those people who need favor from you, it’s too hard to say no. That “Utang na Loob” makes me sick. It is your obligation in return to give them favor too, but see to it you will not be in trouble. But in reality if you have “Utang na Loob” in somebody it will cause you in trouble, not just trouble but in pain. That is very bad. If you think that “Utang na Loob” will harm you then don’t do it. May be there is another chance to give them favor. If your conscience and your heart is telling you it is wrong, and it is against your moral principle then don’t do it. If I’m a computer programmer who is being asked by my employer to create a program that would sabotage a competitors computer system then what will I do is to resigned because it’s against my principle. Well, I think it’s upon the person who is in that situation. But for me if it is against my belief, then I will stop for it. I will resign for that job because there are many best jobs. If it is against your will don’t do it.
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