35 Data Privacy

35.1 Introduction

Data privacy is letting the consumer keep their data private and not letting companies track their online activity without consent. Consumers should have the ability to keep their data secure. Very frequently, companies like Facebook and Google will collect and distribute our data without even letting us know. That data includes but is not limited to internet searches, websites visited (cookies), computer usage, etc. In this day and age, there is nothing anyone can do on the internet without having data collected. You are the product of the internet because you are the accumulation of your data.

Say you needed a new set of clothes for your date tonight. You hop in your car, put on your favorite playlist, and head to the store. After hours of searching, you find the right outfit and head back home. Once you got home from shopping, you opened up your computer and saw an ad with the same top you bought earlier that day. Just during this trip, your data was collected three times without you being aware. While driving, the GPS on your phone tracks your driving patterns were tracked and used to provide live traffic updates. The songs you listened to were recorded and used to recommend new music. After you purchased your new outfit, your credit company sent that information to online retailers. Every day we are tracked without us ever even considering it.

When talking about data privacy, there are four topics you should focus on. The first topic is what data is obtained from the consumers. There is an endless amount of information that can be tracked from your location, political beliefs, personal health, and even sexual orientation. The second topic is how the data is stored. The main form of data storage is physical server farms. These locations are buildings with many computers that store the big data collected. They can have security methods like firewalls, secure file transfer protocol, private virtual networks, and monitoring login attempts. The third topic is who has access to private data. Anyone from Google to Walmart to Moderna collects and analyzes your data. Often top officials of these companies are the only ones with access to it; however, hackers often find ways to get access to this data and use it for their own means. The fourth and most important topic is how that data is used. Companies will use your internet searches and history to then target you with ads based on that data. This is the most prominent example in which we can see our data being directed back at us. These four principles encompass what data privacy is about.

“Exchanging Privacy for Other Perks: Quantified Selfers Get It” by Latitude Research is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

35.2 History of Data Privacy

Time of How Data Privacy Has Evolved

1890 – The Right to be Let Alone – One’s personal and private information is protected from being investigated by the public
1914 – Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established
1948 – United nations is established
1967 – Alan Westin writes Privacy and Freedom; an influential work that set the tone for privacy in technology and personal freedom
1974 – Privacy Act is established. This law established practice for how information is maintained, used and collected.
1995 – EU Data Protection Directive
2002 – E-government Act – Required new technologies to undergo a privacy impact assessment to determine what data was being collected and how the data was being collected
2020 – CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) – Establishes guidelines on how businesses can collect and use personal data for residents of California.

35.3 Impact of Data Collection on Society

The collection of personal data has most definitely impacted society. Companies can use the personal data they have collected to influence their decisions. When ads are marketed to you on social media, this isn’t by chance. These products and services are pulled from data coming from places such as search history, the information you’ve filled out about yourself on various websites, and even the ways in which you engage with these social media sites, such as how long you watch a video on Tik-Tok or what tweets you engage with. This personal data is then sold to companies that are most interested in hopes of being able to sell a product/service to a consumer. The same can also be done for political views and beliefs. Companies are now able to use data points to construct a voting profile on you, the consumer, and then sell this data to politicians so they can market advertisements towards you. As you can see, this has quite a big impact on society, and the way in which these companies use personal data should be regulated to prevent abuse or an overreach by a company.

“Consumers place high importance on notification of data collection” by Altimeter, a Prophet Company is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

35.4 Pros and Cons

35.4.1 Advantages

Personal data is beneficial in some ways such as traffic prediction and planning, helping public safety officials respond more efficiently and quickly, and the ability to learn of news within minutes of an event happening through twitter, instagram, facebook etc.

“Consumer Adoption of IOT Devices Underway in 2015” by Altimeter, a Prophet Company is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

35.4.2 Disadvantages

There are many cons of the collection of personal data. Some include:

– Invasion of privacy & limit to free expression
– Expensive to store and maintain massive amounts of data
– Puts consumers at risk when there are data breaches; consumers have to face repercussions of identity theft

When talking about personal data there are many different cons that you have to consider. Probably the most pressing con is the invasion of people’s privacy. While there aren’t laws saying that our privacy is guaranteed, it is something that should be given considering the day and age we are in. The main problem with collection of personal data and our privacy is there is no disclosure on the side of the companies collecting our data. Just in the instance stated earlier where all you did was drive to the store and buy clothing, your privacy was invaded 3 different times without your knowledge.

35.5 Future of Data Privacy

The future of data privacy is intelligent privacy automation (IPA). IPA is a software that gives consumers more control over their data. This software is an easy to use application that is accessed through an online portal. This portal gives consumers the ability to request exactly what data that a company has collected on them, the ability to modify existing data that has already been collected and the ability to delete their entire data profile. Naturally, some of these requests may pend legal status of the consumer, but this is the right step in giving consumers ultimate control of their personal data.

References

Anant, V., Donchak, L., Kaplan, J., & Soller, H. (2021, January 22). The consumer-data opportunity and the privacy imperative. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk-and-resilience/our-insights/the-consumer-data-opportunity-and-the-privacy-imperative.

Confessore, N. (2018, November 15). Cambridge Analytica and Facebook: The Scandal and the Fallout So Far. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html.

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Martin, K., & Murphy, P. (2016). The role of data privacy in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(2), 135-155.

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(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-04/hackers-breached-colonial-pipeline-using-compromised-password