Hello, i need some help with a question. I'm a Year 1 student in Diploma in Information Technology. Right now, I'm also just started learning about Laws and Ethics of IT.

The question goes like this:

You are the network administrator for a logistics company. You have a young family and need your job to support them. As part of your responsibility as a network administrator is to manage the email accounts of the employees. Usually this just means occasionally resetting of email accounts for staff members that have forgotten their passwords, have their passwords expired or have their email accounts suspended due email volume overload.

One day you get a helpdesk request from Jason, a good friend also working in the company, asking for a reset of his email because his email account is suspended due email volume overload. It is a standard procedure to help to clear the spam emails before resetting the email account. For this case, while clearing his emails, you realize from some emails that he was doing similar logistics business. Some of the email exchanges were with customers that had recently stopped engaging in the logistics company you are working in, and have started dealing with Jason’s company.


You reset Jason’s email account. Your initial reaction is to call him up and tell him about the emails. However you quickly realize that company policy is very strict about revealing the contents of confidential emails of staff members regardless of the contents and unless someone’s life is in immediate danger, under no circumstances are you permitted to reveal the information. You wanted to report this to higher management too, but feel that you may get Jason into trouble, and he will blame you for causing trouble too.


What do you do?

Well what a dilemma! But aren't there any other circumstances when you are allowed to reveal the secret info. They should be written in your contract or attachment. Usually there is a point that alllows you to do it if the info concerns the espionage or can harm the company's reputation or business.
If not - there is only one option to do something that will lead to the offficial check of Jason's emails.

joey,

why did you feel it necessary to open and read e-mails in the process of clearing spam e-mails? If you weren't able to tell if they were spam from the subject or the sender, you probably shouldn't have done anything with them. And you were probably violating policy by reading them.

Putting aside the ethics of opening e-mails not addressed to you, which is not the question you have asked, you are asking how to act ethically now having become aware of the content of those e-mails.

You must consider the range of options available to you. You have listed some, but there are others. You should consider the likely outcomes of each option upon all those who will be impacted. This includes your family, your employer, Jason, Jason's family and friends, customers etc. but not necessarily in that priority. Think hard about who and how people will be impacted ... take a hour or three. Write it down, sleep on it, discuss aspects with a close friend who is not directly involved preferably!.

You must then make what you believe is the most ethical decision based upon your understanding of the likely impacts of each option. Applying existing rules or policy can only approximate the most ethical solution because they are general rules and general policy and this issue is a specific problem.

Typically, but not always, a company manager will apply company rules and will largely neglect the outcomes of applying the rules. Rules are great in helping those who do not have time to make fully informed decisions. But no rule is absolute and that is why the law can be interpreted in various ways as society evolves and new situations arise. In this situation you are in a unique position where you can take action which can be better than following "the rules". Do not abuse this opportunity by taking advantage for yourself.

I do have a couple of suggestions. Exclude the impact to yourself totally from consideration. Only consider the impacts to everyone else, then you are acting in the best interest of others and you can't go too far wrong. Also exclude the impact to non-people, by that I mean if it impacts a company a few dollars or a few customers, don’t worry about it. Act in the best interest of people, not "virtual" or legal entities.

There is no absolutely correct answer, no must or must nots, no guarantees that everyone will agree, (in fact I guarantee many will disagree). But remember, ethics is not about popularity, but about making the best decisions you can for the right reasons.

Based on no one's life being in danger then follow company policy.

If the policy disadvantages the company then that is the fault of the company.