Ethical decisions at eBay

On 21 May 2014, Shellie Nelson reported that eBay had been hacked and a database of user information was stolen (Nelson, 2014). She went on to say that eBay had discovered two weeks before that employee credentials had been stolen, leading to the hack. 

The following day Katrina Lamansky added to Nelson’s story on the same website, but here Lamansky stated that eBay had been hacked 2 months ago (Lamansky, 2014).

On investigation of the eBay website, a trail of messages relating to the cyber-attack began on 21 May, with a number of updates following (Wenig, 2014). A message on the eBay welcome page has a link to a message regarding their security (Wenig, Important Password Update, 2014).

A code of ethics is a formal document that states an organisation’s primary values and the ethical rules it expects managers and non-managerial employees to follow (Robbins, DeCenzo, Coulter, & Woods, 2011). It was not possible to find eBays Code of Ethics on their web-site.

One of the goals of ethical business communication is to tell the truth (Guffey & Loewy, 2013, p. 277). By omitting to tell customers about the hack as soon as it occurred, eBay could be considered to be unethical. They may have used “The Rationalisation Trap” (Guffey & Loewy, 2013, p. 279) to justify their reasons for withholding this information, for example they may have felt that releasing the information immediately would create panic amongst customers. There is also the possibility that their unethical behaviour was as a result the company trying to ascertain the extent of the problem and introduce damage control before spreading panic amongst customers.

While eBay has displayed unethical behaviour, Katrina Lamanskys’ report on 22 May 2014 is not without unethical behaviour of its own (Lamansky, 2014). While Lamansky links her article to the previous article by Nelson (Nelson, 2014), she says that the hack occurred “two months ago”, but does not go on to say that eBay had only been aware of the hack for the past two weeks. Omission is another form of not telling the truth. Lamansky could possibly have an eBay account of her own and therefore lack objectivity when it comes to this personal issue. Guffey (2013, p. 278) states that “ethical business communicators recognise their own biases and strive to keep them from distorting the message”. She does, however, state that eBay “did not immediately respond to a request for comment”, showing an attempt to reveal the issues from the other point of view.

Guffey (2014, p. 275) states that “ethics is about having values and taking responsibility”. There is often a very fine line between right and wrong, with any number of justifications from the party required to behave ethically. Both eBay and the journalist above need to take responsibility for their unethical behaviour and consider their values.

 

References

Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2013). Effective and ethical communication at work. In A. Chan, ITC105 Communication and Information Management (pp. 253 - 320). South Melbourne, Victoria: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited.

Lamansky, K. (2014, May 22). Customers say eBay's lack of communication regarding hack is 'disappointing'. Retrieved from WQAD: http://wqad.com/2014/05/22/customers-disappointed-about-ebays-lack-of-communication-regarding-hack/

Nelson, S. (2014, May 21). eBay warns customers to change passwords after database hacked. Retrieved from WQAD: http://wqad.com/2014/05/21/ebay-warns-customers-to-change-passwords-after-database-hacked/

Wenig, D. (2014, May 21). eBayinc information. Retrieved from eBayinc.com.

Wenig, D. (2014, May 25). Important Password Update. Retrieved from eBay: https://info.ebayinc.com/