Targeted Advertising

The case from the first reading of Target trying to predict which female customers were pregnant is an interesting one, and brings about many questions of ethicality. In order to make this prediction of whether or not a shopper was pregnant, the shopping habits of known pregnant women were studied. After finding out what exactly these habits were, if a female shopper’s shopping habits changed to fit these new habits, Target would classify that shopper as pregnant. These “pregnant” women would then be put on a special mailing list, where Target would send them coupons and offers for merchandise specifically for expecting mothers. This would then cause the pregnant customers to use the coupons and offers to buy the products from Target, and increase Target’s sales.

The ethical questions brought up by this case encompass some of the bigger controversies surrounding targeted advertisement. On one hand, targeted advertisement saves companies money, by limiting and focussing their advertising resources. Also, as a customer, wouldn’t you want to receive advertisements and special offers for the products you actually want to buy? This is the reason that Nickelodeon has commercials for kid’s toys, MTV has commercials for acne medication, and ESPN has commercials for viagra. The upside of targeted advertisement is to focus resources and save time and money for both companies and customers.

On the other hand, many customers might see targeted advertising as an invasion of privacy. A pregnancy, for certain women, may want to be kept a secret (as it was for the teenage girl in the article). If Target predicts a woman is pregnant, and then puts her name on some list in a database, that data could be classified as very sensitive. What type of security measures should now be taken to protect that data? Should new, government-mandated measures be put on this type of data? What if Target starts trying to predict which customers are having an affair? Which customers have a heart condition? Which customers are gay? These potentially harmful pseudo-facts about customers would be stored somewhere, and a breach of this kind of data could be damaging to customers who never consented to this kind of personal information being collected and stored.

With that being said, I think targeted advertising is only ethical if the customer agrees that he/she wants to receive advertisement that is targeted, and therefore also agrees to having their shopping habits monitored and stored to do so. Otherwise, the customer is basically being spied on without consent, even if it benefits their shopping experience. No customer wants to find out that a company has them on a “pregnant” or “divorced” or even “gay” list in some database, with the risk of that information being breached. With this happening, customers are unknowingly putting their trust in that company’s security measures, and I don’t think that is right. You should be able to choose which confidential information you trust to a company like Target, like a credit card number or SSN. The ethicality of keeping a customer’s personal data all revolves around what that customer agrees to.

Edward Snowden

In 2013, CIA contractor Edward Snowden revealed to select journalists details of the US Government’s surveillance practices. Within these revealed documents was the fact that the communication data of millions of Americans were being collected. This data included phone records, emails sent through Gmail, messages on Facebook, etc. By revealing the documents that detailed these practices to a select set of journalists, rather than the general public, Snowden was attempting to make sure the news was disseminated responsibly (by not revealing anything that was overly sensitive to national security).

In an interview with John Oliver, Snowden said something that really made me feel that he was ethical in his actions. When asked, “Did you do this to solve a problem?” Snowden replied, “I did this to give the American people a chance to decide for themselves the kind of government they want to have. That is a conversation I think the American people deserve to decide.” I completely agree with Snowden. Even when ignoring the question of whether or not the government is ethical in collecting data, the American people at least deserve to know what the government is collecting and how they are doing it. A well-informed public could at least then have a conversation about it, and make changes to the current system if that current system is deemed unethical.

I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as calling Snowden a ‘hero,’ but he is certainly not a traitor. He wanted to reveal this information to increase the freedom of Americans, and let them make decisions about the government they live under. For this reason, I think his efforts benefited the American people. I know especially for me, knowing exactly how these government agencies were collecting personal information, and knowing the vast amount of information collected, I was kind of disturbed. It seemed like not only an invasion of privacy, but also that too much unnecessary information was being collected. The TJX data breach, one of the biggest data breaches of all time, was so devastating because TJX was not only collecting too much unnecessary personal information from customers, but they were keeping it for too long. There should be an adequate and well-explained reason for every piece of information collected and stored, and I believe this is a code of behavior that the US government should adopt and practice. Edward Snowden shining a light on this situation can bring about meaningful changes to the data collection practices in this country.

Project 2: Interview Process Tips

For Project 2, our group wrote a guide for Notre Dame underclassmen computer science majors to help them through the interview process as they search for internships and jobs. The guide is meant to be a poster that will be blown up (the letters are small in the pdf). A pdf of this poster can be found here:

Project 2 Poster Board

From my experience, one of the biggest pieces of advice we give, one that we try to emphasize over and over again in the document, is to show passion in interviews. Being excited when talking about past projects shows the employer that you can get into your work and do it will. You should be able to show them that the work that they will give you will get you excited to. A student with an average GPA who talks passionately about a project they did will seem more desirable to a company than a stoic student with a great GPA. In every single interview I had for my internships, I talked about my Eagle Project. I talked about why the project I chose was important to me. I talked about how I raised money, how I coordinated labor, how I gathered supplies. And I also pulled out my phone to show pictures of the finished project to show the interviewer. I showed that even a project I did when I was 17 made me passionate to work hard and create a beautiful and high-quality finished product. The advice to speak passionately was given to me by Professor Bowyer during JPW, and it impacted me so much, helping me ace interviews.

College being viewed as a place of learning rather than a place meant for job-training is idealistic, but I think more job-training courses would be extremely helpful. I had never worked in an office before last summer during my internship, and had no idea what office life was like. Just as an example, one part of office life that is so important, but we never talk about as CSE students, is HOW IMPORTANT using Microsoft Excel is. Almost everything in my office was done on Excel. All pieces of data were put into spreadsheets, conference calls always had spreadsheets being screen shared, and in my first week I was asked to make a macro for Excel. I had not used Microsoft Excel since High School, and yet it was something I used every day at work. Why had this never been mentioned at school? Not one single CSE class had us use Excel or even mentioned how prevalent it was in the real world. I definitely think the current CSE curriculum at Notre Dame is good, but just a single class about real-world problems we’ll have to deal with when we’re working would be extremely helpful. I felt like I was caught off guard once I stepped into an office, and I would have been much more comfortable if Notre Dame had taught me what I was up against.

General Codes of Conducts

In this blog, I’ve already wrote about why I think it is important to create a code of conduct, not just for a company, but for any group that works together. We even wrote our own Code of Conduct for Notre Dame CSE students. The Code itself, as well as my opinions about the importance of creating codes of conduct can be found in this post:

https://cclark17.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/notre-dame-cse-code-of-ethics/

I do want to delve into this subject a little more though. After reading some of the other codes of conducts, I was surprised as to how general the rules were. For example, when reading Django’s and Ubuntu’s Codes of Conduct, I was expecting that the rules would be focussed on technology in some way, or at least be presented through some type of technological lens. On the contrary, the rules were extremely general, and it could have been the Code of Conduct for any group or business. It had little to no rules about technology or code, as the ACM Code of Conduct had. Some of the rules looked like they could have been taken out of the Code of Conduct for Target, Goldman Sachs, or even Notre Dame.

I do actually like the generality that Ubuntu and Django uses in their Codes. It illuminates the universal nature of certain values, like “be considerate,” “be respectful,” “take responsibility,” and “highlight the great work of others.” All these values are presented so generally, because they should be practiced in all businesses.

However, I would like to see an additional section of the code that focusses in on more specific ethical dilemmas that the company faces. Our team liked the ACM Code of Conduct so much because we could relate to the Computer Science-related rules. Since every company has its own unique issues, I believe that it is import to create company-specific rules in a Code of Conduct to use when those company-specific issues arise.

Burnout

My everyday life as a college student when I was a Junior was as follows: try to wake up at 10:15 AM to make my 10:30 class. If I pressed the snooze button a few too many times, or if I was feeling especially tired that morning, no big deal. I could miss my first class of the day. With only two or three hours of class each day, I was free to take naps, relax, or watch TV in all my free time. However, I knew that I would have to change my habits to better adjust to my new schedule when I started my internship in the upcoming summer. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Summer began, and so did the internship. I was told to report every day at 7:30 AM. Unfortunately, my office building was in Midtown Manhattan and I was living at home in New Jersey. The commute was an hour and a half each way. That meant that I had to wake up at 5:30 AM every morning, five hours earlier than I would wake up in college. I would drag myself to the train station at 6:10. When I got my usual seat on the train, I would have to use every ounce of energy I had to keep myself awake. God forbid I fall asleep and miss my transfer stop. It was a grueling process every morning. The commute home was even worse. At least only a few people commute to Manhattan so early. Unfortunately, EVERYONE commutes home at 5:30 PM. The commute home was always more crowded, more frustrating, more delayed, and always took longer.

I got home on my first day at 8:00 PM and I was exhausted. I ate dinner at home and fell asleep by 11:00 PM. The cycle began the next day. The early wake-ups mixed with all the time sitting on the train, sitting in the office, and sitting on a train again caused severe burnout. Especially with the lack of free time once I got home, I felt like I was only doing work. I had to find a way to reduce this burnout.

Very much like Andrew Dumont’s “Avoiding Burnout” article, I found that exercise helped. A sedentary lifestyle, sitting on a train and at a desk all day every day, was such a change from college life, where a pickup game of basketball or a game of quad football was just a short walk away. Luckily, my building provided a gym for employees, which I took full advantage of. I used my lunch breaks to lift weights. The workout was also a nice break from any monotonous work I was doing. After the workout, I would grab a quick lunch and bring it back up to my desk to eat. Also a tip from Dumont, I tried to eat healthy for lunch each day. I felt the most energetic during the day when I didn’t eat heavy or fatty meals. The need to work out and eat healthy every day also stemmed from my fear that the new sedentary lifestyle would negatively affect my health.

Since after graduation, I will work full-time at this same job, and I’ll still be living at home in New Jersey, I will have to find more ways to prevent burnout. I already have some ideas. I’ll bring books to read on my commute to help me stay awake and stimulate my mind in subjects unrelated to my work. I’ll try to be involved in groups or clubs outside of work to extend the activities I do and people I see on a weekly basis. Lastly, I’ll try to take a break every once in a while from work to wipe the slate clean and help me recharge my batteries, and come back to work better and more energized. I do not want to be another helpless victim of burnout.