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Ethics on the Internet Essay

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Ethics on the Internet

In today's society, there are many ethical issues on the Internet. Some of the biggest issues and concerns seem to be hacking and viruses, copyright infringements, spam, privacy, and cyberporn. Internet ethical issues affect a wide variety of individuals and almost all people today are affected in some kind of a way. Until recently, most computer users had not been very concerned with questions of ethics and may not have been aware of something being seen as an ethical issue, but this depends on every individual's position. However, today there are many concerns about these issues and some organizations are trying to get laws approved protecting individuals in today's society.

Copyright infringements …show more content…

Many companies gather information and sell if to other companies and sites for their use. This violates an individual's privacy and allows for spam mail. Spam is a very frustrating thing and is a significant problem. Statistics show that an estimated 30 million email messages are sent out each day and about 30% of them are unsolicited commercial emails.

In 1996, the court found that mass mailers don't have a constitutional right to obstruct someone's computer. With costs today, bulk email is extremely cheap for businesses rather than the original way of using postage. With 30 million emails going out every day, this is extremely likely to cause problems with the speed and access to many Internet System Providers (ISPs). Many large ISPs have suffered major system outages as the result of massive junk email mailings. It is believed that almost 95% of recipients don't want to receive these messages, which has caused many junk emailers to use tricks to get you to open their messages by changing the text in the subject line. They may use "the information that you requested" or other descriptions that would probably catch your eye.

Most of the time a hacker will say that they are simply alerting the public to certain

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