At the RSA Security Europe Conference, individual privacy was brought to the forefront of people’s discussions. It was argued that communication and society has changed forever and that will have a negative impact on personal privacy. In the decades before, conversations were generally done face to face or over the phone. Yet nowadays, lots of communication is carried out via email and/or websites. This creates a saved hard record of all correspondence.
Deleting an email does not necessarily get rid of it. The receiver or sender still has a copy on their account. Furthermore, large data centres make it really easy to record online conversation. It was argued that inexpensive technology and ever increasing memory capacities mean that data storage and collection is now more accomplishable than it was a few years ago.
You might be asking why it would matter so much, but private data equals more money. Having access to loads of personal data can often result in companies making more money from advertising. Daily, this is routinely seen when signing up for anything new, with those ‘cross here if you do not want to receive any correspondence from us’; this occurs offline as well. However, how many users read all of the privacy policies and terms of agreement for the computer applications we use or the sites which we visit? It may be astonishing to examine a few of them and realize precisely what the website can do with your collected data.
Facebook has routinely been derided for its complicated privacy policy and not being transparent. It is totally possible for you to read almost all the info on someone’s profile if they haven’t enabled selected privacy options. While the safety conscience among us all will ensure to set the privacy options accordingly, a lot of people usually do not know they’re exposing themselves to prospective online crime and identity theft. It’s not just sufficient to claim that it is their own problem if their level of privacy is compromised. Moreover, companies should never wish to deceive consumers for the purpose of less difficult data collection.
Google was also faced with lots of political and social complaints with regard to its unauthorized collection of private data while collecting data as a part of its StreetView services. Google effectively listened in to people’s wi-fi connections and subsequently stored private data. Google’s nonchalant reaction upset lots of people and many national governments were drawn into the debate challenging the legality of what Google did.
The more information an organization has on you, the more they can charge companies in order to target users. If an organization knows that you are female, aged between 30-40 and have four children, then advertisers will be willing to pay more since they are able to target their advertisements more efficiently. If an advertisement is targeted at the correct user then the sellers will get more results. Marketers are willing to pay more since then they could target with toy advertisements, home improvement advertisements, kitchen advertisements and so on, compared to advertisements for weight lifting or extreme sports (although these are gross stereotypes).
Hence, it is key to ensure you have read the terms of agreement accurately. Whenever you register for anything you are signing a contract. It is actually horrible to think one ill-judged registration for a website could result in anything bad a few years later. Always read the small print, it might sound clichd but it just may save you from sticky situations. Furthermore, you should also always keep safe online safety practices. Having a great password is a great first step but you might also want to use a password manager that will increase your online security! You can stash passwords to a site and keep them secure and safe.
If you eat a lot while surfing the internet, you may experience this. Sometimes it’s so bad that it feels like this!