Social Impacts of Ict

Task 2: Social Impacts
Assignment 2:

Introduction:

Welcome to my blog, my name is Rajmeet Sarna ,I am employed at Cranford Estates and i will providing information to my boss on the social impacts and potential threats of ICT.
Social Impacts:
People use most of their free time on watching TV or using the Internet on social networking sites such as Facebook twitter and Myspace.

The advantages of ICT on socially is that it creates jobs. Since social networking sites were created people spend more of their free time on these sites, talking to family and friends. the advantages of ICT are that it makes communication easier , quicker , cheaper than any other way of communication. Work becomes easier as computers are faster and you can do many more things on the computers and the Internet. Internet is a key source to students worldwide as they are many websites which try to help them with their homework and coursework. many schools, colleagues and universities are updating their websites with work they have done in class.

Economic Growth: Computers are used in nearly every job that is available now. Due to this it is vital to have IT skills for a job. if you have a IT job you can do work from home which is helpful someone that has a family or for someone that is unwell, and they can do their work from home. With Internet people can do shopping online this has helped businesses as people don't need to leave their house to go shopping.

Data Protection Act 1998:

Data may only be used for the reasons for it was collected for
Data must not be passed on without the consent of the person it is about
People have a right of access to the information held about them
Personal information may not be sent outside Europe unless the person whom it is about has agreed
Organisations that process information must register with the informal commissioner office
Organisations that keep personal information must have adequate security measures in place
Sustainability:
Computers use electricity and, many millions of them in use in homes and businesses, they make a huge contribution to to energy consumption and other related issues which includes such as climate change. In addition to this, with the computer hardware developing rapidly, there is a problem to meet the demand of the products.

Legal impact:

Copyright Law:
The Copyright Law protects all the people who produce their own original work, this could include Songs, Films and Books. With music and films available to be downloaded, over the internet it is very easy for people steal material in copyright and sell it on. As people are very easily able to do this, they have set up file sharing web services, where people upload any films and music. All of this stops artists to make money as all of their songs are free on the internet, so why would people go to a music store to buy a album and pay for it when they can just download it at home for free, this has had a major effect on music and the film industries.

Plagiarism:
Due to many documents and files on the internet it has made it easier for people to plagiarise documents. as all they have to do is copy and paste the other persons work.

Ethical:
Securing Data
Encryption:
This is a method of encoding data so that only the intended recipient can decode it, for example of this would be you can encrypt data even on your hard drive so if ever the data is stolen the data cannot be read. Encryption is also used for online transactions so personal details of customers are not stolen.
Firewalls:
Firewall is a piece of equipment that examines all data that arrives on your computer or network and detects any data that breaks the firewall rules. It does this to protect you from viruses and malware.
With so many benefits it also has some negative sides to it such as
Back up: It is always safe to back up data in several places as there is no method which can guarantee to prevent data being lost or even corrupted. You could back up data on a hard drive or USB-drive.

Potential Threats:
With so much of our information on the Internet, it can easily used by fraud artists and in scams.
Such as the Data Protection Act which prevents your information being used in anything that you didn't know about and should be used for the reasons its been taken in for. This act also prevents the employees keeping data which is not needed. Also the information you haven given to your employer shouldn't be given to anyone else.

There are many things such as Cyber bullying which are downside to ICT, cyber bullying affects many people's life's daily by people threatening and insulting them. there are many of being protected from cyber bullying such as on social networking sites you can block people you don't know. Also you can change your privacy setting to the way you like it, so anyone that isn't you're friend cannot view your profile,photos and videos.People use hacking to get people's private information such as bank details for cash, to make email accounts,photos and videos.

Another disadvantage of IT is spam, which include things such as videos, picture, plus games.If a person clicks on the spam link they have received they have a risk of attaining viruses. If a computer gets a viruses it could delete files on the computer , plus it could slow down the whole computer system. Spam emails are emails which advertise things, for example a phone at a highly discounted price, which gets the attention of the email user very quickly and as soon as they click the link they have a high risk of attaining viruses.

Finally, the use of Phishing is a huge negative in the IT industry as it has ability to attain personal details of users, this could be bank account details, usernames and passwords. People do this by acting as a trusted business or a person, they direct you to a identicle looking legitimate website, which makes the user feel like they have recieved an email from the company itself. The person who send you directs you to the email is most likely to be in control of the website, and soon as the details are transferred to the person in charge of the website, your personal information may be misued.