Ethical Use & Social Impact of Malware
Malware is short for "malicious software." Malware writers steal passwords, account numbers and personal information to obtain account access that can be used to commit identity theft. Other motives for malware include espionage and sabotage (from rival countries or competitors). Malware serves no ethical purpose.
Facts
Malware infections cost businesses more than $121 billion between 1997 and 2006, according to the Computer Economics website. The global economic impact of malware infections topped $13 billion in 2006.
Impact on Businesses
Direct costs to businesses caused by malware infections include the labor required to analyze and clean infected systems, loss of productivity, revenue losses and mitigating damage from identity theft. These costs exclude purchasing and maintaining security software and ongoing information technology personnel costs.
Impact on Consumers
The direct effects to consumers from malware infections include economic loss resulting from stolen credit cards, stolen accounts, time lost from work to recover from identity theft and associated legal expenses
Non-Financial Impact
Malware infections cost more than money, such as damage to a company's or individual's reputation, erosion of public trust and stockholder confidence.
Considerations
Opening infected email attachments, browsing questionable or malicious websites and accessing social networking sites are common ways malware infections can occur. Computer viruses cause the most malware infections.
Prevention/Solution
Installing and updating anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software provides the best remedies for malware infections. Refraining from visiting questionable websites and deleting suspected email attachments provide further remedies.
Tags: identity theft, email attachments, Ethical Social, Ethical Social Impact, from identity, from identity theft, Impact Malware