In the 6th lecture, Mrs. Li asked us, if having a lot of data is advantages? At that point in time, I asked myself if we are even aware where data is collected.
If you’re seeing a discounted product on a website and spontaneously decides to buy it, you’re probably thinking that you did a free decision. With a high probability, this view is really naive. We all know that data will be saved if we enter them when doing a transaction online but data is also tracked, which we do not even enter actively. Also, people who are not regularly visiting the internet are not safe from big data. Cameras follow every step we’re doing and the best spy is always with us: our smartphone. They track when we’re going to bed, when we’re waking up, they read our messages, listen to our calls. What will probably surprise you is, that a new flashlight app even tracks the movement of people and passes them on to advertising companies.
I do not have to tell you, that a lot of companies collect data. What is happening with those? Collecting data from different areas and connecting them in a smart way, allows them to speculate peoples personality, characters as well as their emotional state. Facebook is able to predict with a 60% likelihood when a person will have an affair or a relationship by just viewing at your habit of connecting with other people. Facebook does not even have to read your messages to be able to predict this. In regards to this, companies even analyze with the help of your contacts, your daily phone calls how your relationships do in regards to certain personalities.
In the book “They know you. They own you. They control you” from Markus Morgenroth, he explained his experiences when working at the data company Cataphora. The company is specialized in locating illegal workers in companies. To be able to do so, they collect emails as well as contact data and compare those with all other workers from the company. In this way, suspicious patterns can be found helping to spot illegal price agreements.
Moreover, the company Acxiom already collected data from 44 million people from their purchases, their internet searches and their usage of cards. All these are used to predict buying behavior and is used efficiently.
Also, people get divided into “bad” and “good” when it comes creditworthiness in near future. Companies rank peoples’ creditworthiness with the help of age, gender and place of residence. Consequently, a young professional can be restricted to a credit just by living in a more urban area.
All these mentioned aspects are probably not new for you but isn’t it scary to know that you’re watched all the time? Health insurance and advertisers, government agencies and employers, hackers and criminals – all are interested in data. With modern equipment and the Internet, they are more easily able to collect personal data. It is important to recognize the extent of this monitoring.
With this article I don’t want to scare you, rather making you aware of the dangers of data and coming back to the question from the beginning: The more data, the better? Not always! Since we are the future of tomorrow it is up to use how save the future will be.
Dear Natali,
Thank you for this interesting article. This really got me thinking and I think for many people it is indeed good to reflect on their internet behaviour and which data companies can get from you by your online behaviour.
I think a lot of people are unaware of the value of their data, exposing them to cases of identity theft and data fraud. People use various technical products and most of the time people sign in without reading the terms and conditions stating how their private information will be used. It looks like without the meaningful data literacy, people will keep sharing their private information online, while being oblivious of the impact of their data being made available in this way.
I think what further contributes to the problem is that the rules and regulations for data protection tend to be very lax in a lot of countries. most companies do not invest enough in ensuring the protection of their users since there are no real consequences for the mishandling of private or personal information. A dilemma here is the regulation, collection storage and trading of data when companies and operations operate across multiple continents and jurisdictions. As you might know, the Dutch government is giving the privacy more of a priority, regulating dutch firms in what data they can collect without the permission of the person they obtain it from.
I think it is important that all parties involved – people, organisations and governments – should contribute to solve this problem before it gets bigger!