Sunday 1 January, 2012

XII. COMPUTER ETHICS


XII. COMPUTER ETHICS


SHORT ANSWERS

1.What are ethics?
  • Generally speaking, ethics is the set of rules for determining moral standards or socially acceptable behaviours.
2.What are the general guidelines on computer ethics?
The general guidelines on computer ethics are:
1.Protection of personal data,
2.Protection from computer crime and
3.Projection from cracking.
3.What are the three important methods of protecting personal data?
The three important methods of protecting personal data are as follows:
(i)Physical security,
(ii)Personal security and
(iii)Personnel security.
4What does physical security refer to?
  • Physical security refers to the protection of hardware, facilities, magnetic disks, and other items that could be illegally accessed, stolen, damaged or destroyed.
  • This is usually provided by restricting the people who can access the resources.
5.What does personal security refers to?
  • Personal security refers to software setups that permit only authorized access to the system.
  • User IDs and passwords are common tools for such purpose.
6.What does personnel security refers to?
Personnel security refers to protecting data and computer system against dishonesty or negligence of employees.
7.What is a computer crime?
A computer crime is any illegal activity using computer software, data or access as the object, subject or instrument of the crime.
8.List out some of the common computer crimes.
Some of the common computer crimes are:
  • Crimes related to money transfer on the internet.
  • Making long distance calls illegally using computers.
  • Illegal access to confidential files.
  • Stealing hardware.
  • Selling or misusing personal.
  • Hardware and software piracy.
  • Virus
  • Cracking
  • Theft of computer time.
9.What is piracy?
Making and using duplicate hardware and software is called piracy.
10.Why do we generally tend to pirate?
  • We like free things.
  • Why pay for something when we can get it for free?
  • Our thinking and actions are self-serving.


11.What is a computer virus?
  • A virus is a self-replicating program that can cause damage to data and files stored on the computer.
  • These are programs written by programmers with great programming skills
  • 57000 known virus programs are in existence
  • 6 new virus are found each day
12.What is called theft of “Computer time”?
  • When computers in an organisation are idle, some other software may run on these idle systems without the knowledge of the organization is called theft of “Computer time”.
13.List out any two of ten commandments of computer ethics written by Computer Ethics Institute.
  • Should not use a computer to harm other people.
  • Should not interfere with other people’s computer work.
  • Should not snoop around in other people’s computer files.
14.What is cracking? What are the reasons for committing this crime?
  • Cracking is the illegal access to the network or computer system.
  • Illegal use of special resources like hardware, software, files in the key reason for cracking.
  • Revenge, business reasons and thrill are other common reasons for committing this crime. 

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