for new mom Ellen Rigney baby topper was
her favorite show
dad Nathan called it her CCTV
I would have the nest cam
pulled up on the iPad over there
so that I could see him from every
angle
so they were terrified to hear a
man's voice caught on their nest cam
coming from the baby's nursery
we heard sexual expletives being said in
his room
he turned that camera on and
told us I'm going to kidnap your baby
I'm in your baby's room
they raced to
the infant's room to find topper alone
sleeping soundly the Rigneys had been
hacked
and they're not the only ones the
dircolts family in Texas says a
stranger spoke to their nanny through
the baby cam security experts warn Wi-Fi
baby monitors are vulnerable to online
intruders the rigneys filed a police
report but the hacker will likely never
be found
nest is blaming a hack on users poor
password security and is alerting
affected consumers to reset their
passwords and setup two-factor
authentication
it makes me feel invaded
and
in 2015 87 million users were affected
by a data breach regarding Facebook
although the breach occurred in 2015
Facebook did not go public with this
information until 2018 the hack allowed
for access and control over users
profiles including senior executives
this hack potentially allowed access to
not only users Facebook profiles but
other services as well that they use
Facebook to log in
Tim Cook or as some
would say Tim Apple is a huge proponent of privacy
Tim Cook states that privacy
has become a crisis he goes on to say
that you are not our product our
products are I phones and iPads
we treasure your data we want to help you
keep it private and safe
fake apps
a fake app is an app that is meant to
appear as whatever app it was you were
looking for only as a clone that will
attempt to steal information
the app will prompt to gain permissions 
on the device to steal the information
or infect device with viruses and
malware
one example of a successful fake
app was the brightest flashlight app it
was an Android flashlight app since most
Android versions didn't have a
flashlight button so someone made a fake
version of the app which many people
downloaded and it was able to steal the
geolocation of users without having any
permissions on the device
despite the Google Play and App Store
having processes in place to detect and
prevent fake apps from appearing on the
market places, some are able to slip through
more and more people every day
are using their mobile devices as an
everyday tool
more Android malware
coming out poses security concerns for
larger corporations who have employees
who access corporate emails or other
sensitive information from their mobile
devices
free apps everything comes with a price
and in the case of free apps it's your
personal information
many apps we
download for free can be a way for
marketing companies to profit from your
personal information
examples of this
would be Facebook snapchat Instagram
free games and weather apps
these are
all examples of apps that watch over and
sell our personal information
these apps can monitor our cellphone percentage
what other apps we've been using and
search history
have you ever noticed how
when you search for something on Google
you receive ads on your other apps are
getting the same thing
so for example if
you were to search for a new laptop you
get on your app and you're gonna see ads
for your new laptop from Best Buy or
whatever it may be
quick tips and
preventive measures having a good
password is obvious there's a reason why
services ask you for a capital letter
number special symbol in your firstborn
child also having multiple passwords as
ideal
let's say you have one password
across all your accounts if a hacker
gets ahold of it he has access to all of
your accounts
if you have multiple
passwords and a hacker find your
Facebook password worst he can do is
write a few nasty status updates
two-factor authentication
everyone hates
duo but it really does increase security immensely
finding out someone's password
can be hard enough but throw in another
requirement for logging in and chances that
someone else logs into your account
decreases drastically
finally be careful
what you download like we said before
fake apps and programs run rampant
across all platforms
be smart about what you download
we've taken a look at these different
cases of apps and other technology
watching us and using our own
information to their own advantage and
profit but is this all considered
ethical based on these three ethical theories?
Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism, and Kantianism
let's go into order and discuss each of these
theories
first is Act Utilitarianism
Act Utilitarianism states
that for something to be ethically right
it must provide the most overall
happiness for everyone
by this
definition the cases we've looked at
become more complicated than a regular
yes this is ethical or no this isn't
ethical base
in order to determine if a
case is ethical or not from an act
standard we must examine them from a
case by case basis
for example Google
takes information from your searches and
refines it memorizes it and looks at
what other searches and keywords pertain
to your search
like during this project
i searched google for searches about
Act Utilitarianism and when i
was done i started searching for
Rule Utilitarianism and google was able to
autocomplete it after only a few letters
the same thing happened when I started
searching kantianism
we can see that
this would be considered a good or
ethical way of using information to help
you progress in your searches
however there are also bad ways of data
mining your information such as when
applications like Facebook and Instagram
had massive data breaches and had a lot
of personal data hacked
that affected people who use the applications
as we can see these cases
make it so that in order to determine if
this is ethical or not from an Act Utilitarianism point of view we must go to a
case by case
basis in order to determine
just how ethical they are
second is Rule Utilitarianism
Rule Utilitarianism states that in order for
something to be considered ethical it
must have ruled your laws that are in
place to prevent anything from being
considered unethical to happen
from this
definition we can assume that since
there are very little to no rules or
laws regulating data mining and cookies
that it is indeed ethical to go about
mining data from other people
instead of
asking whether or not the actual act is
considered ethical or not, based on the
rules in play, we should begin asking if
all the rules in place need to be
changed or added in order to make
something ethical or not
lastly is Kantianism
Kantianism states that in
order for something to be ethically
right, it must not use someone else as a
means to an end
in most of the cases we've looked at
this is exactly what companies are doing
they're using other people and their
information as a means to an end to help
them make a profit from it
Kantianism states that if one act is considered
unethical then all of those acts are to
be considered unethical
there can be no gray areas in Kantianism
