Personal Data Breach
Ashely Madison, a website that promotes extra-marital affairs was subject to a massive data breach earlier this year; personal details of some 37 million users, as well as the companies financial records, were threatened with release. Subsequently, large caches of the data were posted online and a then-unknown hacking outfit named The Impact Team claimed responsibility. This breach not only compromised the data from the Ashley Madison database, but also Avid Life Media, who owns the Madison website, as well as two more “hookup” sites. The hackers claimed they were motivated in response to ALM claiming that for a mere $19, it would completely wipe that user “clean” and remove all history of site usage and any personally identifiable information.
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What can only be described as a maelstrom of angry spouses and partners, flooded social media, with any public figure or celebrity caught out on the email list, fair game for public humiliation and persecution. This raises an important ethical question, whether hacking personal data can ever be ethical. In one camp we have ASM misleading and storing customer data, unbeknownst to said customers and against what they thought they paid for. On the other side we have hackers, publishing this data for all to see, effectively “outing” ASM’s underhanded scheme, but the knock-on effect is putting millions of people details out there, for public naming and shaming, shockingly even leading to suicide in some instances, such as a pastor and professor in New Orleans taking his own life, citing the ASM …show more content…
As this became more of an issue, what with the growing use of information systems, in 1990 the Computer Misuse Act was passed. The act recognised the following offences:
Unauthorised access to computer material(i.e. using a computer without permission)
Unauthorised access to computer material with the intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences(Covers actions such as attempting to use contents of an email message for blackmail, or stealing credit card information
Unauthorised modification of computer material. The most serious of the three offences, taking into account actions such as distributing virus or any malicious deletion of files, as well as altering an account to obtain fraudulent
What can only be described as a maelstrom of angry spouses and partners, flooded social media, with any public figure or celebrity caught out on the email list, fair game for public humiliation and persecution. This raises an important ethical question, whether hacking personal data can ever be ethical. In one camp we have ASM misleading and storing customer data, unbeknownst to said customers and against what they thought they paid for. On the other side we have hackers, publishing this data for all to see, effectively “outing” ASM’s underhanded scheme, but the knock-on effect is putting millions of people details out there, for public naming and shaming, shockingly even leading to suicide in some instances, such as a pastor and professor in New Orleans taking his own life, citing the ASM …show more content…
As this became more of an issue, what with the growing use of information systems, in 1990 the Computer Misuse Act was passed. The act recognised the following offences:
Unauthorised access to computer material(i.e. using a computer without permission)
Unauthorised access to computer material with the intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences(Covers actions such as attempting to use contents of an email message for blackmail, or stealing credit card information
Unauthorised modification of computer material. The most serious of the three offences, taking into account actions such as distributing virus or any malicious deletion of files, as well as altering an account to obtain fraudulent