Business Ethic Privacy Case Study

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Trident University Module 1 Case Assignment ETH301: Business Ethic Privacy is a major part of people lives. In this article I learn a young marine by the name of Justin Ellsworth was killed in the line of duty. His parent wanted all his belonging including his email information. Yahoo being the email provider denied the family of having his emails, due to a privacy policy that states that its accounts are nontransferable and that "rights to the Yahoo! I.D. and contents within the account terminate upon death." Destroying the data once the contract ends simplifies life for Internet service providers (ISPs), says Mr. Chappell. The family had to take yahoo to court. The judge granted the family access to Justin’s emails and yahoo had to hand them over. John Ellsworth the father of Justin learned that there were more than 10,000 pages of email messages and photographs on the disc (Chambers). I for one am not in total agreement with the judges or yahoos decision. Nor am I in total agreement with the family gaining access to Justin’s emails. People all over the world value the fact that their emails are private, that is why we use passwords to protect the privacy of our email accounts as account holders. Only allowing the people we want to see the emails. Furthermore if the emails did not relate to the cause of Justin’s death then what was the purpose of the parents’ request for the emails? I feel that access to Justin’s account should have been granted to his parents without his consent for the following reasons. I think that the parents should have been granted access if the cause of his death was unknown. My first reason why I feel that the family should not have receive access to Justin’s email is because yahoo states in their privacy policy that its accounts are nontransferable if this is correct then “no one” should have access
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