Week 11: Privacy

Question 1 -
See if you can find an example of a privacy breach that was reported in the Australian or international news in the last 6 months. What were the consequences? i.e. legal, political, financial, personal etc. What action was taken in response to the privacy breach?
The article I have found about a privacy breach is the article “Online leaks splash confidential medical details on net” by Anna Caldwell. The article discusses how over 250 patients details were leaked. Such information as their ‘names, phone numbers, addresses and medical histories were exposed’ (Caldwell, 2009). This is a major breach of privacy due to all the information is private. The consequences of the breach were legal although no fines could be placed unless one of the affected parties (patients) lodged a complaint (Caldwell, 2009). Such issues as privacy breaches usually result in legal and financial ramifications. The people who have been affected could sue the business because their privacy has been breached and leaked onto the internet. The actions which have been put into place are that Privacy commission is looking into the issue. There have been more privacy breach issues which have been reported causing the Privacy Commission to look into more breaches (Caldwell, 2009).


Question 2 - Have you been using Turnitin software this semester? If you have was it a positive or negative experience and why?
This semester I have not used turnitin although my first semester at university I used Turnitin. It has been a few years since I have used it although I must say I have mixed feelings about the process. Such as since everyone’s work has been submitted to the program any similarities are picked up considering the assignments are meant to be similiarish. Little things get picked up such as a sentence is similar to someone in another country who has a similar question which they have answered and sent to Turnitin. A rather bad aspect of the whole process is sometimes it takes days for turnitin to generate the result. This causes a lot of concern because the time that it takes to wait for the result there might be a few changes which you want to make. The time it takes to wait can also become alarming if the assignment is due within a couple of days. When your whole class has to submit through turnitin the process takes longer and become rather frustrating.



Caldwell, A.(2009). Online leaks splash confidential medical details on net. Retrieved May 25, 2009 from: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,25266776-3102,00.html