What Are You Going To Do About Your Own Web Data?
One of the benefits of the Facebook Beacon affair is that it has made many more people aware of the open nature with which so much data is exchanged on the Internet and the World Wide Web.
I’m not excusing Facebook; companies need to be honest with their customers. But I do think that many of the comments I have read in the blogosphere tend to be rather naive. Personal data is bought and sold every day, on and off the web. Web surfing data is tracked religiously by for profit, nonprofit, as well as private sources. People allow “cookies” to be placed on their computers either unknowingly or to simplify their web surfing experience.
Let’s face it; when you connect to the web, you are making a public statement that you are willing to give up some of your privacy. The question is what people will do about it. The first thing is, get educated. Perhaps we should be teaching our children how to encrypt files. At minimum, it seems to me, we all need to become more knowledgeable about managing our own “online identities.”
So far we have seen a reluctance on the part of online vendors and institutions to tell us exactly what they are doing with the data they collect about our online behavior. For example, try finding out the details of what Google actually does with all the data it collects about you once you agree to their privacy statements.
What originally interested me in this topic was the fact that people are buying and selling personal data without compensating the people whose data is generating the value. That’s probably a minority view. Right now I would be much happier if the privacy statements online vendors and sites publish were more meaningful to me personally by telling me what they know and who, specifically, they exchange that data with. Are they required to do that legally? Probably not.
Would it hurt them if they did so? I don’t know. I’m still amazed at how little people really care about issues such as Facebook Beacon when you move away from technically literate groups into the mainstream, and I don’t think that indifference is going to change overnight. With so many other critical social issues to worry about, that’s probably not surprising.
Dennis D. McDonald
in Privacy, Personal Data Management, Ethics, Social Networking, Facebook, Identity, Social Network Portability, Personal Data Ownership
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Reader Comments (2)
The reason - at least to me - that Beacon became so offensive was that it fundamentally changed the relationship between customer and retailer. And it changed it by essentially inserting this new element into the equation. Namely, Facebook. The retailer and Facebook decided that Facebook would be a party to these transactions without our prior knowledge, let alone consent. And then info was transferred to our 'friends' on Facebook in a somewhat shady manner. If we didn't see that little pop-up in the short time it was up, too bad. The entire time the burden was on us to stop it and - as you pointed out - we, or our friends didn't benefit from this system one bit.
That's different from us knowing in the back of our minds that the information of our purchases goes to some database that will be used for inventory/marketing purposes. That's because Beacon is more tangible. It's happening in real time and effects our buying experience and our relationships.
But you're quite right about what you're saying - we're being tracked all the time. On the internet - behavioral targeting. Through our credit card purchases. Buying stuff at supermarkets with our discount cards. And,yep,that's the tip of the iceberg. So it is surprising to see some of the outrage on data collection. I see the behind the scene aspect of Beacon as underhanded and I don't like it...but I also know that that's the way business is done. We really can't get away fom it. If we have a free service, like Facebook, then we have to expect that something like this will happen.
A quick point on the lack of response from those outside of the technology/marketing communities. I'd say that it is largely because they don't know about it as opposed to them not caring. Like all of us, they're busy. And it's my guess that more would care if they knew. But also, this is something that is discovered bit by bit. Only if you buy something and the info is transfered. It wasn't an all-find-out-at- once situation or at the very least when one logs onto Facebook and sees a new thing there staring them in the face.
You've spurred me on to try to figue out what's going on with my data now.
- Dennis