Unethical practices is a term which covers the broadest range of activities which people may undertake in their private or public lives, and are considered wrong by their society or certain members of it.
To state that something is unethical is to assume that there is an ethic, a commonly agreed upon set of moral principles that clearly allows a society to determine what is right and what is wrong. At this point, at least in the West, the only thing that fulfils this function is the law. But the law is not a substitute for morality.