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Building Web Apps that Respect a User's Privacy and Security
book

Building Web Apps that Respect a User's Privacy and Security

by Adam D. Scott
December 2016
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
70 pages
1h 13m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Building Web Apps that Respect a User's Privacy and Security

Preface

As web developers, we are responsible for shaping the experiences of users’ online lives. By making ethical, user-centered choices, we create a better web for everyone. The Ethical Web Development series aims to take a look at the ethical issues of web development.

With this in mind, I’ve attempted to divide the ethical issues of web development into four core principles:

  1. Web applications should work for everyone.
  2. Web applications should work everywhere.
  3. Web applications should respect a user’s privacy and security.
  4. Web developers should be considerate of their peers.

The first three are all about making ethical decisions for the users of our sites and applications. When we build web applications, we are making decisions for others, often unknowingly to those users.

The fourth principle concerns how we interact with others in our industry. Though the media often presents the image of a lone hacker toiling away in a dim and dusty basement, the work we do is quite social and relies on a vast web dependent on the work of others.

What Are Ethics?

If we’re going to discuss the ethics of web development, we first need to establish a common understanding of how we apply the term ethics. The study of ethics falls into four categories:

Meta-ethics
An attempt to understand the underlying questions of ethics and morality
Descriptive ethics
The study and research of people’s beliefs
Normative ethics
The study of ethical action and creation of standards of right and wrong
Applied ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781492042921Errata Page