If you would go back in time 40 years and started a conversation about privacy, you’ll probably hear a lot about how giant companies keep more and more of their ‘personal data’. On your turn, you can tell that this is still a problem 40 years later, in the year 2020. However, you will both be speaking about totally different things. I don’t think people in the 80’s will believe you if you told them that we’re mostly okay with the fact that virtually all companies involved in e-marketing know precisely what you’re intending to buy and that the commercials we see are tailor-made video’s that match with our behaviour, That we know our activity on internet is being traced and that all the data is gathered somewhere in a giant database, ready to be used to maximise profits of multiple companies.
The concept of privacy has changed a lot since the introduction of internet and countless other technological developments. In the past decade, the topic of data privacy has gained interest and has become a feared downside of the current technology. An important consequence of these discussions is the increased awareness of the lack of privacy that is accepted by internet users. The question is, will there be any privacy left, when technology is developing at the rate it is today?
Interestingly, I think we’ve reached the summit of (sensitive) data transparency. Due to this increased awareness of the information companies possess, more measures are taken to avoid the exchange of even more personal data across the world. For example, the usage of a VPN is becoming more common. Of course, we are only in the beginning of the process, only 14% are choosing to encrypt online information. But the fact that the privacy has become an issue, resulted in sufficient possibilities to counter the data that is being gathered. Maybe in another forty years, we can go back to frowning upon the information a company has about the purchases someone made last week.
References:
www.mckinsey.com. (n.d.). Consumer data protection and privacy | McKinsey. [online] Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/risk-and-resilience/our-insights/the-consumer-data-opportunity-and-the-privacy-imperative.
