Cyberethics involves respectful conduct online that is sensitive to the rights of others, including privacy and differing opinions. It is not a set of rules but focuses on integrity, honesty, and respect for others, including in professional settings.
Cyberethics is a term used to describe activity that takes place in an online environment that is considered honest, forthright, and sensitive to the rights of others. Unlike cyber law, cyber ethics is not a set of rules and regulations that are set out in some sort of list of legal obligations that must be followed or face punitive measures from law enforcement agencies. Rather, cyberethics focuses more on choosing to engage in conduct that is respectful of self and others online, while still enjoying all the opportunities provided by the Internet.
There are a number of issues that can be touched upon when it comes to the practice of cyberethics. One has to do with respecting the privacy of others online. This means choosing not to expose personal information about another individual in online environments such as social networking sites, chat rooms or public forums. Ethical behavior online would mandate that personal information remain personal until that individual chooses to share that data about themselves in one of these settings. For example, it would be a violation of cyberethics to reveal on a social network that two friends are engaged before the happy couple chooses to make the announcement themselves.
In addition to discretion in sharing personal information about other people, cyber ethics also involves respecting the rights of others to hold different opinions on various topics, including politics, religion and business. While this does not mean that such differing opinions need to be affirmed or agreed upon in any way, basic ethics requires that any contrary responses focus on the opinion itself and not on the intelligence or character of the individual holding the opinion. This approach can often lead to greater understanding between people who hold different ideologies, even if they never actually reconcile their different thoughts.
In many respects, cyberethics is identical to the ethics manifested in any other type of interaction between individuals. The expectation is that every person who participates in the discussion or virtual environment will conduct themselves in a way that shows integrity, honesty, and respect for others. Under this type of behavior, this means that professional ethics online will preclude the use of misleading or vague data when pitching products to potential customers or attempting to use proprietary data associated with competitors as a way to undermine competition and capture a larger market share.
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