Ashley Madison Hack Creates Ethical Conundrum For Researchers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ashley-madison-hack-creates-ethical-conundrum-for-researchers_55e4ac43e4b0b7a96339dfe9
Frederick and other experts agreed that the research
applications of these data are potentially endless. At the most
basic level, you could use them to tease out patterns of
infidelity (or at least interest in infidelity) in terms of
geography, age, race, religion, sex, height or income. But with
the tremendous benefits come serious risks. As sex researchers
dig into the data from the Ashley Madison hack, they're
confronted with a set of thorny questions: Is the data reliable?
Is it proper for researchers to analyze? Is it even legally
permissible to access? "We're in uncharted ethical waters with
the Internet and all the data that's coming out of social
networks. The Ashley Madison hack is just a particularly
difficult example of a much larger issue," said Dr. Sharlene
Hesse-Biber, a sociologist and research ethics expert at Boston
College. The reliability question is the most pressing; after
all, if the data are so unreliable that they're not usable, the
ethics and logistics don't matter. Early, non-academic analysis
of the data has shown that a huge share of the 36 million
accounts in the hack were fake, inactive or incomplete. And
Ashley Madison made essentially no effort to verify any of the
information in these accounts -- even email addresses -- so much
of that information may wind up being useless.
- - -
You mean researchers are concerned that users might have put FALSE
information on forms at an online marriage cheating site?
Surely you jest! (I know, I know, don't call you Shirley.)
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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