Ethical and Social Issues in Information System

Why do cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, and BlackBerry) want to track where their customers go?

They want to track where their customers go because they need to collect customer data for advertising and marketing purposes. Besides, manufacturers can know what customers needs and wants by tracking where and what places they go. 
By knowing all these aspects, manufacturer can create products that suit for customers to use. Next, manufacturer can also send advertisement, coupons and flash bargains based on where the consumer are located.
 By using the tracking system, manufacturer not just track the location of customers, they also can promote their product and services in the right time and right place. The good time of promoting may prevent customer from switching to other competitors and yet company can gain extra revenue.

Do you think cell phone customers should be able to turn tracking off? Should customers be informed when they are being tracked? Why or why not?

In our opinion, cell phone customers should not able to turn tracking off. This is because nowadays the technology is too high for normal people to control. Even normal tracking like Facebook tracking system can be off, customer cannot run away from the tracking of NSA and GPS. The microchips inside the phone allow NSA to tracked to location of the phone and also will reveal customers’ location. NSA can also track the position of customer even the phone has been switched off.

Next, the customers should be informed that they are being tracked. This is because their privacy has been expose to outsider and yet there are laws and regulation that protect customers privacy to prevent their personal privacy from being exploit by manufacturers. Besides, customers should be respected by manufacturers. So, there is a need of informing customer that they are being tracked.

Do you think cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy?

In our opinion, cell phone tracking is indeed a kind invasion of privacy. It just like your located location has been exploited by others. As tracking where does a person gone to is officially considers that his or her privacy has been revealing. It is violation of a person’s privacy when the person movement is getting spy. Therefore, the person might not have any privacy due to the tracking of manufacturers.