Ethics and credibility in business communication

            In the year 2015 mid of August a crew of hackers known as Impact hacked the extramarital affairs website. The hackers leaked troves of facts about Ashley Madison’s users and displayed the personal information like the account details of 32 million of its members (Taylor 2015). The hackers were motivated by one, criticizing Ashley’s core mission of arranging affairs between married couples. The other motivating factor of these hackers is the fact that they have attacked the business activities, particularly its requisite that customers should fee $19 for inclination of eradicating all their records from the place. However it was proved to be untrue that the site never fully deleted the user profiles formed on the site. They also unconfined monetary information about its parent company and the CEO’s emails (Taylor 2015). This presented evidence that the company’s executives were aware of the vulnerability of security even before the hack.

            There had been very clear communication between the company and the general public. The company was meant to help people be whom they felt comfortable being in the face of the public through media. The company had granted to delete the accounts set against the email owners consent after preventing people to do it themselves. The company required people who confused their email addresses locating accounts for the wrong email address from people who often created profiles with fake addresses, to pay for the service of deleting the profiles (PEACE 2015). They affirmed that on paying the stated amount of money the profile would be deleted. This was their ethical obligation as a company to the public whom they served.

            The victims were willing to benefit from the service after getting this information and many of them payed to have the profiles deleted. They got millions of users but some complained of the profile not being fully deleted (PEACE 2015). The message of assurance that the profiles would be deleted gave the company a lot of credibility from the public. They got many users of their site out of the great work they had promised to do for the affected individuals.

            The company should understand that to gain credibility they should be characterized as integral people. These are people who does right with right reasons and objectives. In these case they should be careful about the choices and promises they make in the face of the public. They should avoid making commitments that they cannot keep and wherever a mistake arises they should be ready to own it up and do the necessary corrections immediately. They should also be authentic, doing exactly as they say and ensure no secret in their intensions.  They should also not be ignorant of the fact that people believe what they see and so they should be honest ensuring there is no guess work of what their intensions are (Carroll 2015). All this can lead to an assurance of credibility for Ashley Madison’s company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Taylor, D. (2015). Ashley Madison hack reveals telling twist: The brand isn't even real.                            Central Penn Business Journal, 31(37), 13.

PEACE, E. (2015). Affair Site Hack Effects Linger. (Cover story). Credit Union Times, 26(32), 1-14. Top of Form

Carroll, C. E. (2015). The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation. Hoboken:                                                                                   Wiley.

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