Cyberethics of Business Social Networking

Abstract

The digital technologies open a virtual world where making successful business over the Internet and especially on social networks imply unusual ethical dilemmas. This chapter will seek to handle this problem, characteristic of the information age, highlighting ethical challenges surrounding the participation in a new electronic dimension which quickly became ubiquitous. In the same line of the marketing model entitled “Marketing-mix”1, a new mnemonical model is presented. This model will be designated as “Cyberethics2-mix”, and is composed by four elements, all of them having the initial letter “P”. These elements represent the following ethical issues that should be carefully taken into account when practicing business on the Internet: Property of intellectual rights over digitized contents; Precision of the content and data made available on the www 3; Possibility to access the on-line information flow; Privacy of personal data on Internet networking /