Internet Ethics

In our age, Internet is the biggest information network in the world; it consists of a set of heterogeneous networks from over 100 countries displaying huge amounts of virtual resources; it provides facilities such as email, file transmission protocol (ftp), workgroups discussion or chat, information and dissemination of information (www – world wide web). Internet has a major impact over all activity fields: political, social, economic and private life of users, as well. Newly developed, models of on-line business are a basic element in economic growth of a company. Taking into account the specificity of access on the Internet, it is necessary to establish/create/set and respect clear principles and rules to access the virtual business environment. These are created by specialized organizations or even developed in internal frame of the companies. Using these rules, acceptable activities and unacceptable activities (for a potential user of Internet) are defined. In the time that ethics defines a concept related to the adequate conduct of a person in the social environment, we can speak about business ethics, especially business on-line ethics. Ethics appears in relation among persons or in relation between persons and computers. Ethics is in business environment, in this case, virtual environment, but to the workplace, too. Managers have major responsibility to set, implement and respect some ethical systems within the company and to be an example in this sense.