Welcome to My New Social, Ethical and Legal Aspects of IT Blog

Hello, my name is Muhammad Matin Malik and this is my blog about the social, ethical and legal aspects of IT and I’m level 2 IT student at Halesowen College.

Social Impacts Of IT

Social impacts can be useful in a lot of ways as in social media you can keep yourself entertained by chatting to your friends or people all over the world. Other different advantages can be emailing work documents, files, videos etc.

Local Communities – A positive impact is that people can communicate with others and keep people aware of what’s going on and local events. Also, at anytime you can shop online on websites e.g. Ebay, Amazon and you are able to do this on most electronic devices. This is useful for people that are not able to go shopping by themselves such as elderly people and disabled people.

However, there can be some negative impacts such as stress when you get worried about something on social media or argue with other people which can lead to cyber bullying. This could also affect your real life interaction skills because you are only interacting with people behind a screen and to people who spend too much time on social media may experience lack of sleep and damage to their eyes.

Economic Effects – Anyone can set up a business very easily now if you have an internet connection, it could be just setting a website or selling an item on Ebay. Also it is very easy to advertise yourself by using social media like YouTube and upload videos. Items online are much cheaper compared to them on the high-street which is why they are going bust. This is because the owner of the building is paying for rent, heating, lighting, council tax, insurance, water and maintenance bill, staff and they haven’t even sold anything yet. However, if you are selling products online, you don’t have to pay staff and you already are paying for the bills, and you don’t have to place it in a store as it gets directly seen to the buyer. The way people are shopping is different now as there is no point going down the high-street when you can just order and sell items online.

Sustainability – Companies that use a sustainable model save a ton of money as they reduce consumption of non-renewable resources. This is also good for the environment and reduce negative effects on the health and reassurance on building occupants, which will increase building performances. Three key stuff about the sustainable model are recycle, reduce and reuse and companies use this so they don’t effect and put pressure on the supply chain.

Legal Aspects Of IT

Copyright – When you write a piece of program and someone has copied it, this is a crime and you would need to get permission from the programmer. This is the intellectual property law and it’s automatically assigned to the piece of work and is your piece of work for the author’s lifetime and 50-70 years, after that anyone will be able to use it. Copyright infringement is when a piece of work is used by not the author without permission where permission is due.Fair use is when you copy an author piece of writing but give him credit or when you do the same but in your own words however it must be used for a non-profit organisation. Also, when you crop an image and use a small amount of the picture, but you must make a different meaning and use of it to make it original.

Plagiarism – Is when someone does copyright, fraud or can also be an act of theft. This when your pretending someone else’s work or ideas as your own without their consent
and incorporating the work into yours with acknowledge of what you are doing. The penalties of plagiarism is that you can get expelled from college, your work could get destroyed, a fine between £100 and £50,000 and may serve a prison sentence.

Ethical Aspects Of IT

Privacy Of Information – Everyone is entitled to their private information and a right to their privacy. People who hold this data must keep it protected by law. Data controller are the people that capture your data and keep it safe and data subject are the people that give the data or who the data is about. DPA stands for the data protection act, it works closely with something else called GDPR which stands for general data protection regulation, these two are the laws. Another law is the CMA that stands for computer misuse act and it has 4 different parts. The first part is unauthorised access and the second part is unauthorised access with intent. The third part is unauthorised access and modification and the fourth part is creating hardware or software of any information of the other parts.

Unequal Aspects – Sometimes unequal access can be a good thing and a bad thing. An example of unequal access being a good thing is that on the grade system at Halesowen
college, students aren’t allowed to change them as if they were everyone would change it to distinctions and passes. An example of unequal access being a bad thing if one student in a class had access to Moodle and other people’s grades/information and the others don’t which will be unfair. Another example of it being a bad thing can be if in a computer room every keyboard is working except one so that single student is unable to get their work done or do what the other students are doing.

Why Is The Blog Good At Conveying Information To A Wide Audience?

Who Can Access Your Blog? – Anyone will be able to access my blog as long as they have internet and an electronic device.

What Type Of Information Can Be Included? – You can include anything in a blog like my blog is about social, ethical and legal aspects of IT. To make your blog stand out, you can also use images.

Editing And Publishing Blog – If you didn’t like something about your blog, you are able to edit it or if someone was to write a comment containing profanity, you are able to delete it and report it to the authorities which may be their publishers.

Is There Anything That The Blog Does Not Do Well?

Is It Difficult To Make A Blog Entry? – No, because all I did was use my Halesowen College email and made a strong password to secure it as it’s my account and so only I could enter it.

How Easy Is It To Update An Existing Entry? – It is very simple to do, you go to any of your existing blogs and in the top right there is an update button and once you click that your blog will be fully updated.

Safety And Security

Passwords/Login Details – They made sure I chose a strong password which must contain minimum of 8 letters with multiple uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. My username contains my name and a number after it so it’s easy to remember.

Emails To Register Your Account – I used my Halesowen College email for this and WordPress will send you an email to verify you to make it sure it’s you and not someone else using your email.

CAPTCHA – Is short for Computer Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans apart is a technique to stop bots from making blogs. There will be an image of some numbers/letters and you’ll have to enter them correct to access the blog. Computers or bots are generally able to solve a CAPTCHA.

What Makes Email Safe To Use

Securing Of Personal – Keeping your passwords private, encrypt your data and use security software. Also, be alert of impersonators and safely dispose your personal information.

Data Protection – If you have personal information in your blog, it is best to keep your blog private. However, if you want to keep your blog public, make sure you keep your details that identify you just to yourself and check who has access to your site occasionally.

Firewalls – They monitor the behaviour of other users on the server and communicate that information with other firewalls. Also, they establish a barrier between a trusted internal network and an entrusted network.

Improving Accessibility In A Blog

Choice Of Colours – Be careful of what colours you are using as they could affect people’s emotions, your mood and feelings. In your blog, you shouldn’t use too much different colours because this may take your distraction to other parts of the blog where you shouldn’t.

Choice Of Text Size – To make your blog look professional you should choose a suitable text size and for the reader to be more appealed to your blog. Also, this is very important to show who you are targeting your blog to and to make your content effective and aesthetic.

The Contrast Of Text And Background – The colours should match between the contrast of text and background and must be opposite colours shown like below in the image. The Le Courier table below shows black text on a yellow background works good and with green text on white background doesn’t work well. This is because a white background could hurt your eyes and affect the readability. However, another light colour like yellow will still provide good contrast to a dark text and will increase the accessibility and readability. 8% of men and 0.5% of females are red and green colourblind and will not be able to read the last two of the table.

Choice Of Text Font – This is very important for attracting your target audience as you would want them to be able to read your blog with ease. Especially, as people read 25% slower off a computer screen so a common font to use would be Ariel and Comic Sans as they are very easy to read and suitable for all audiences. A font like Brush Script would be too complicated for some people to understand so it’s best to not use a font like this.

Inclusion Of Images – Images may share over a thousand words and by including images, this will make your blog look better and you won’t have to write as many words. Some images could be animated or a video and if you don’t use any type of image, people may skip your blog post. Also, make sure to choose an image that is compelling to you and your target audience will like.

Tooltips For Text Readers – Tooltips are very useful for the accessibility in your blog and some browsing software’s can help visually impaired people as tooltips can be read in words on their computers. By just including a tooltip will massively improve the accessibility and availability of your blog. An example, when you put your cursor over Google a word in small text appears on the screen. In this case, it says Yahoo (shown in the image) which must be a mistake as it should say Google. Some tooltips are automatic and some require you to click on a word to show the tooltip.

Follow My Blog

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.