Patrick

5/5 (2)

“Your Drive storage is filling up. Click here to purchase additional Google Drive storage.”

Click, look at the prices, and think to yourself “Well, Dropbox will give me an additional 5GB og storage for free. I’ll just put part of my files there.” And off you go, splitting and sorting your files across half a dozen cloud storage solutions because you couldn’t get yourself over paying for the convenience of having everything in one place. 100GB for less than €2 a month. That`s two sips of the pumpkin spice latte you`ll gladly justify tomorrow afternoon after going to the gym.

The same goes for apps, music, videos, and everything digital. We’ve gotten this idea in our minds that what is digital should also be free, because it doesn’t have a value you can touch. You’ll likely hesitate to click Buy while looking at the chart-topping newest mobile game on the market that everyone is talking about, even though it cost less than a single tram journey to uni.

Which raises the question: if most of the services that Google, Apple and the others offer are free, how do they cover the costs? How can the billion-plus monthly Gmail user base possibly be justified in Alphabet’s bottom line?

There’s one thing that explains it all: if you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

Yes, we do hand over ungodly amounts of data to the large companies that rule the internet. Photos, search history, interests, location data, contact data – the variety and precision of the data that is exchanged every single minutes between our personal clients and servers of all these services is immense. That’s where the latter get their value from. There’s three main reasons these services can be (and remain!) free. Let’s have a look:

Google, Facebook, Apple etc. don’t make any money from these services directly. Your Gmail user file doesn’t have inherent value – nor do your Facebook photos. Google doesn’t charge for the use of their Translate service. Yet every single time you translate something, the inherent value you attach to it rises, and you become more likely to use other Google services as well. Found a few long-lost friends on Facebook? You’re more likely to stay on the platform and make it your main social network rather than hedging your bets elsewhere.
If Google search were paid, it’s unimaginable that they would enjoy the market domination they do today. Users would balk and go seek out free alternatives, even if that means giving up a little bot of quality of service.
Lastly, and probably most importantly: all these services make money from the data that you provide them. The personal profiling one can create with a little bit of internet history is shockingly accurate, and that means better advertising, better promotion of new services and personalised offers – and in turn, since all the services appear better to the user since they’re unique to him or her, higher inherent value of these services. It’s a virtuous cycle.

The large tech companies use data as the core of their business model. That’s how they make their money. They’re businesses, after all – not charities. Google uses data to personalise ads, Facebook to create an entire digital identity and Apple to sell you hardware it knows you will like. There’s no good guys and bad guys here – it’s a business.

Then comes the argument of privacy, which in a very pragmatic sense is a moot point. Of course there should be lines drawn on what can and cannot be stored and exchanged, or what needs to be anonymised. But the same people who fight for privacy have no qualms in posting their latest holiday pictures on Facebook for all the world to see. Huge improvements have been made in privacy awareness, but the reality is that whenever Facebook or Google prompts you to review your privacy settings once a month, most users click away because they want to get to the .gif of a hamster balancing on top of a lab’s head quicker. (It’s here, by the way. I know you want to see it.).

The services used on the internet can be this good specifically because there is so much data in and around them to make them this good.

Should there be an ongoing discussion on privacy and on what data the internet giants can be allowed to access? Most definitely. Yet should the users be aware that in any service they use for free, a trade-off between data given and service taken is made for the simple privilege of using that service and having it meet our expectations? Perhaps even more so.

Sources

Idea for this short note gotten while using the definitely-free Google Search. Google is now trying to sell me additional Drive storage (“how can google keep gmail/its services free”). Have a sold part of my internet soul to the giant? Yes. But it’s also made it possible to find this CNN article here as main inspiration and ponder my thoughts to write this contribution.

Guess that’s a win-win.

5/5 (1)

In an attempt to uncover information on Olympians and their alleged banned substance consumption, two hacker groups were lately the perpetrators of a massive data breach on the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA (1). It’s the latest of the large data breaches, now a common occurrence.

Before you carry on, have a look here: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/ to get an idea of the numbers, and how real the threat is.

This is going to be about the why of data breaches. They happen for a multitude of reasons, and they’re crucial in understanding the darker side of businesses having everything in the digital realm. The fact of the matter is that to do business today, you need to be connected. You need data on your customers, your suppliers, your products and the behaviour of all these stakeholders. Data-driven decision-making is a science that works with massive amounts of data, and it’s made possible by the proliferation of constant data gathering and the availability of virtually free storage to hold it and analyse it. Digitalised businesses gather, use and need this data for their most basic processes. As such, the data gains value. What used to be a series of 1s and 0s is now worth something. What happens when something is worth something?

Right.

Someone will be looking to steal it. Now, hackers are a peculiar bunch. They have wildly different reason for doing what they do. From personal research and past projects, here’s the gist of it. Here’s why hackers do what they do.

Reselling the data. Online accounts, credit card numbers and identity papers that you can quite literally browse a shop for. Customer data that is stolen by the millions, and is resold for next to nothing: $10, $30 and $90 in that order, 24/7 customer service included. Generally quite harmless in the grand scheme of things. Damage: 1/5
Defacing organisations. We enter the realm of every security expert’s nightmare. Large businesses having their data centres breached and their confidential information released. Not only is the financial cost of this considerable ($4 million per data breach, at minimum (2)), but the loss of goodwill and public image can be enormous. Think of financial organisations or government agencies that rely on trust. Damage: 3/5
Creating political instability. Remember that WADA debacle this post was introduced before? There’s no proof it came from Russian hacker groups. Yet that’s how Western media pitches it. Same went for the Clinton email hack earlier this year. Sources and reasons are still unclear, but the opinion of more than a few media outlets is that it came from the Russians (Russia is home to some of the most notorious hacker groups.) – or from the Trump camp. A conclusive opinion is yet to come, but think of the mess it creates, pitching everyone against everyone. (3) Damage: 3/5
Wreaking havoc. This one goes a bit further than the rest because it is completely gratuitous. Hackers are among the most skilled individuals in the world of IT. And naturally, in the crime world, street rep is a huge deal. So to prove that they’re the best, hacker groups pick targets and destroy their public image, just because they can. Damage: 3/5
Cyberterrorism. While all of the above are generally harmless for human life and equipment, cyberterrorism has the capability to bring cities to their knees, cause the loss of human life and start wars between countries. Nation-states create political unrest and spur others to enter an armed conflict. Power plants are shut down from across the globe. The UK now considers cyber attacks and terrorism as their number one threat to national security (4). Stuxnet, in 2007, brought US/Iran tensions to a new high when the allegedly US/Isreali-developed computer worm infected Iranian nuclear centrifuges (The story is fascinating, go have a look (5)). Cyber defense teams are now an integral part of a country’s armies and intelligence services. Damage: 5/5

So here we have it, the darker side of having data in numbers that dwarf our imagination. It’s a short perspective that can be expanded on how to protect us against all this, how big data analytics and later, quantum computing, will help reduce data breaches. We’re missing the part that you, as a customer, play in your data security – and the whole question of privacy. I hope this short post sparked the interest in what is a fascinating subject that starts at the top of an organisation and ends in the darkest corners of the hidden web.

Make no mistake, data breaches will happen in organisations and governments. It’s not a question of if anymore, but a question of when, and who will be affected. Protecting ourselves against them is absolutely crucial, and as future BIM grads, I hope we will have an integral part in doing so. Happy to answer your questions and comments below!

Free, you say? Nothing is free.

8

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“If only you knew the power of the Dark Side.”

19

In an attempt to uncover information on Olympians and their alleged banned substance consumption, two hacker groups were lately the perpetrators of a massive data breach on the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA (1). It’s the latest of the large data breaches, now a common occurrence.

References

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