Personal integrity and the issue of ethics are important aspects considering
the modern society's dependency on information technology. For example is it
quite easy to trace someone's electronic path on the Internet. E-business
uses this new technology to individualize their products to suit all
different kinds of customers. This is done through gathering a great deal of
sensitive information about their customers: which is a serious matter when
considering personal integrity and the issue of ethics. But steps are being
taken by the Swedish government to protect personal integrity by creating
laws, such as the Personal Data Act, which is concerned with protecting the
private citizens personal integrity. As stated it is quite easy to trace
someone's electronic footsteps on the Internet, one way to do so is by using
cookies, something the e-business has caught on. Cookies are used more and
more by different companies to store information about buying behaviour and
profile their customers. Cookies are considered to exist in a kind of grey
zone in an ethical and legal sense, ethical because consent is seldom asked
for, which also concerns the law.
The aim with this Master Thesis is to examine how system developers, who
work with design of e-businesses, deal with ethical issues and personal
integrity at a general level and especially when using cookies. As
theoretical framework the theory of Systems Design, theory of Cookies,
theory of Personal Integrity, theory of The Personal Data Act and theory of
Ethics was used. In order to draw conclusions and complete the aim of the
thesis, qualitative interviews were made. The raw data was then analysed
with the help of Cross- Sectional Indexing of Data (Mason, 1996).
The thesis points that the system developers considers personal integrity
and ethical issues throughout the design process, by showing responsibili...
