Unit 27 Web Server Scripting Extended Diploma in ICT Ethical issues Unit 27 Web Server Scripting Extended Diploma in ICT

Criteria P6 P6 explain the issues surrounding web server scripting We will look at ethical issues Ethics – concerned with right and wrong behaviour What can you do with web server scripting that could be classed as unethical?

Cookies  a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser the same website can retrieve the data stored in the cookie Cookie data can be used for Session data Tracking visits to the web site Recording browsing history

Third party cookies Third party cookies are those set by other web sites appearing on the selected web site, such as adverts Advertising companies use third-party cookies to track a user across multiple sites and build a picture of their browsing history This allows the advertising company to target advertisements These cookies raise concerns about privacy

EU directive the consumer must give his or her consent before cookies or any other form of data is stored in their browser

Local data storage Web applications can store data locally using HTML5 This could be useful content needed to let the application run efficiently and offline. It could also be bad content used to track users without their knowledge or consent. For instance, local storage could be used to back up cookies so that the data is not cleared if the cookies are cleared

Fake web statistics Advertising revenue for a web page is determined by the number of “page views” These are counted by small bits of javascript You can add additional code to execute the javascript multiple times Auto refresh programs can refresh a web site thousands of times in a day They can use proxy servers to hide their IP address