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We have already seen how our personal data has become the new currency of the digital age , also including how many and which of them are of most interest to companies and how they can use it to profit from it. Two questions, however, remained almost unresolved: is our privacy protected? But above all, is it really worth "publishing" by creating accounts that represent us in social networks, forums and different sites? techwadia
Our "2.0 fingerprint"
Taking up some notion presented in the editorial linked
above, among the various types of data part of the so-called "Big
Data" there is one that directly concerns us users: human generated data ,
or all those small elements that we make public once we we subscribe to social
networks like Facebook, we open a blog like Wordpress, we write a review of a
restaurant on TripAdvisor or a hotel on Booking, or we buy a good on eBay or
Amazon and see a TV series on Netflix.
These are all platforms that we are now forced to use at
least once a month, if not daily, for work, for travel or simply for fun. Once
we open an account and start using these services, sometimes they immediately
start asking us to share our tastes and passions in order to "map"
our person and propose content suitable for us: for example, Spotify asks what
are your favorite music genres or artists, to create ad hoc playlists at first
and then recommend other songs on Discover Weekly, Release Radar and Daily Mix;
Facebook, on the other hand, asks which pages and groups may be of interest to
you, or even to access the contacts directory to find out who has the telephone
number registered on the social network and invite you to send a friend
request.
A new normal
We add another ten, twenty platforms that offer different
services and ask for different tastes and passions, and here we have actually
allowed the World Wide Web to know us, or rather we have allowed companies to
trace the contours of our digital identity based on the footprints we leave.
when we sign up: age, gender, geolocation, photos in which we or our family
appear, and so on.
Talking about it like this seems like a dystopia, yet it has
now become a very normal thing: all the companies that have set foot in the
digital sector collect the user's personal data through different algorithms,
and we, to take advantage of their services or buy goods from their website. ,
by agreeing to the famous "Terms and Conditions of use" , we allow
them to keep a certain amount of our data that will be treated " in full
compliance with applicable laws and information on their treatment ".
After all, every single online platform must comply with the rules on privacy
and the processing of personal data: taking as an example the most famous and
used social network in the world, namely Facebook, there is a page completely
dedicated to the company's policies.
Quoting the first few sentences you can read, "We
collect the content, communications and other information you provide when you
use our Products, including when you create an account, create or share content
and send messages or communicate with other people. This may be information
contained in or related to the content provided (such as metadata), such as the
location of a photo or the date a file was created.
This also includes the elements displayed through the
functions we offer (e.g. our camera), which allow us to take actions such as
suggesting masks and filters you may like or giving you advice on using
portrait mode. Our systems automatically process content and communication that
you or others provide to analyze context and content for the purposes described
below " , followed by a short list of data subject to special protections
under EU regulations, including the GDPR.
The real problem is that most of the subscribers do not seem
to care about privacy issues: a Deloitte study conducted in 2017 showed that
out of 2000 US citizens 91% consent to these Terms and Conditions of use
without even reading them , with the 97% peak in the 18-34 age group.
A further test conducted between 2016 and 2018 has instead
involved 543 students who were asked to enroll in a completely new social
network called NameDrop, which appeared in paragraph 2.3.1 of the TOS request
to donate to the platform their future firstborn son .
The results? 74% of the interviewees skipped the Privacy
Policy section (about 30 minutes of reading at the average reading speed of
adults), while 26% spent an average of 73 seconds on the dedicated page; all
the participants instead "read" the TOS for about 51 seconds on
average. Finally, 97% accepted the Privacy Policy and 93% the TOS .
What are the factors that influence the choice not to read
the long list of articles and paragraphs where the policies to protect users
are listed? According to researchers Jonathan A. Obar and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch,
but also other professors such as Rainer Böhme of UC Berkeley and Stefan
Köpsell of Dresden Technische Universität, it would be thesite design, the
"click-to-agree" approach and the length of the TOS .
The types of privacy
Yet privacy, especially after the Cambridge Analytica
scandal , has become an extremely important concept for citizens around the
world; its complexity, however, makes it less and less accessible to the
average user . Policy makers have understood over the years that it was
necessary to take cover with new updated regulations such as the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, but also philosophers,
sociologists and many other authors have focused on privacy, even dividing it
in eight different types :
• Traditional identifiers : any basic information to
identify a person, including demographic data such as name, date of birth,
gender, race, address and more.
• Behaviors and actions : attitudes assumed in public,
semi-public and private spaces, and habits in shopping, monetary transactions,
history of online searches.
• Thoughts and Feelings : Opinions on a wide range of
topics, including those about companies, also known in the marketing world as
psychographics.
• Images : photos taken by people, various types of
equipment, drones, satellites and robots in public and private spaces
• Biological data : physical characteristics such as face,
hair color, body, voice, but also physical and mental health
• Personal communication: chat between customer and company
via e-mail, social media, telephone or messages, but also searches on the Web
through cookies
• Geolocation : information about the geographical position
of an individual or his property
• Associations and groups : affiliation or participation in
activities of groups and sub-groups, religious, political, related to the world
of work or personal hobbies and passions.
A recent study by Deloitte has analyzed the problem of
privacy in a very exhaustive way by studying how the various countries approach
from a legal point of view the protection of users' personal data, which
however does not always align with the cultural values and expectations of
citizens. in search of ethical standards fully known to them to avoid the
so-called "gray areas", or the lack of clarification on the ethical
and responsible use of such data .
The perception of the average citizen
To do this, Deloitte conducted a survey of 6,000 individuals
from six different countries (Canada, Chile, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom
and the United States): the results revealed that most (about 80%) do not lend.
attention to how their information is collected and used by their respective
governments or companies, as they simply trust them and use it in line with
their ethical expectations; 86% of participants would be ready to break all
ties with the organization if it were to use the data without respecting their
ethics. Despite this, 53% said they were not familiar with the privacy rules
and 20% did not know even one.
Still, while about 83% of them said they buy goods and
services online several times during the year, only 55% read the Privacy
Policies before making such purchases, while 67% "somehow" trust
them. the conditions listed without reading them and 24% trust them
"completely".
But what is striking is the answer to the question
"Would you share data online in exchange for something?", since in
most cases, out of a total of ten different cases presented by the researchers
to the survey participants, if it were a question of sharing personal
information for the goods of humanity it would be done immediately: 61% said
they were willing to make their personal physiological medical history
available to discover a cure for life-threatening diseases; or, 64% said they
would not mind if the police were to unlock and access the cell phones of
suspected criminals for security reasons.
Leaving aside the ethical standards, 57% said they were in
favor of sharing their purchase history with companies in exchange for
discounts on their favorite brands; about 55%, on the other hand, said they
were in favor of accessing their history in apps such as Spotify, Netflix and Hulu
to receive suggestions on songs, films and TV series to hear and see .
The advantages...
In today's digital age, the amount of data disseminated
online is increasingly expanding and this can frighten us, but there are also
benefits. First of all, as mentioned above, the benefit that we users can
derive immediately after registering with a platform is the ability to access
more and more contents recommended by the algorithms .
For example, when we view the Instagram feed, the system
automatically fills it with photos and videos of content creators that we do
not know, to make us discover more and more reality and make us feel better.
The same happens with YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and many other sites where
there is the "Recommended for you" section based on our previous
searches, on our playlists of videos, movies and TV series saved in the account
for later viewing.
In the world of social media, however, other advantages lie
ahead: several companies, in fact, especially for specific jobs such as social
media managers or marketing experts, try to define the identity of the
candidate based on content posted on the platforms or even on pages and groups
managed in the past, as if the latter activity was part of his curriculum.
Furthermore, LinkedIn is considered one of the most useful social networks for
workers and companies : 93% of employers search and contact candidates directly
through this service, looking at it as if it were a basic Curriculum Vitae.
And there is no lack of potential benefits, which however
would require radical changes in society: in this reality based on big data, in
fact, there are great responsibilities for both citizens and companies, but
both parties - especially the last - often do not the right choices and do not
respect certain ethical values.
For this reason, in the style of the GDPR, it could be an
idea to draw up many new rules to finally create a safety net and protect user
data and their privacy. Some examples were made in 2016 by another study by
Deloitte:
• Review and renew the current Privacy Policies, as they
often include "neutral" statements or statements deemed almost
useless or unclear, to ensure that users can truly trust the organization and
understand all the implications (costs and benefits, advantages and disadvantages)
of disseminating personal data online and of the permissions given to companies
to collect and process them.
• Explore new technologies to protect sensitive information
, such as end-to-end encryption.
• Make good use of emerging data and technologies, to
guarantee benefits both to users and to companies and institutions: the former
would share their information to allow companies to explore new tools and
possibilities, while the latter should be more open to the former by explaining
to them the reasons and benefits of using data in a certain way.
... and the disadvantages
However, publishing oneself online has also become a lottery
for various reasons: we saw one of the most underrated in the series of surveys
carried out by the Statista site on privacy, specifically a study conducted in
Italy among 8000 young people between 13 and 20 years in which the greatest
threats on the network are listed . The most shared are cyberbullying, loss of
privacy, becoming the target of trolls, threats and harassment, stalking and
sexting, and more. Therefore, among adolescents and young adults, the greatest
concern is not how companies and institutions use personal data available on
social networks , but how other citizens (and not just peers) approach the network
.
The possible trend that with the decline in the average age,
concerns about online privacy grow, then it can be attributed to other people
more than to multinationals and social media managers, especially among young
people. In fact, if the legislators are continually putting pressure on the
giants of the tech world with issues concerning the protection of the digital
citizen, the citizen himself can create accounts (even fake ones, if he wishes)
to engage in activities that can harm psychological and even physical health.
of another user , such as online bullying, harassment and trolling.
Although there are many awareness campaigns on the subject,
unfortunately the human instinct remains this: to exploit a service that is
always available and free to one's advantage, even if this violates ethical
principles or the laws themselves . Compared to the physical approach, "in
real life", the online one risks ending positively even for the malicious
person, especially if it involves activities such as "trolling"
(sending provocative, irritating, meaningless messages with the aim of
disturbing communication and make other users nervous) or
"catfishing" (create an account with a false identity to deceive
other users), since it usually ends with the victim's lack of reports.
Finally, the doubts about theprocessing of personal data by
companies is certainly lawful, but a simple remedy could be to take the time to
read a good part if not the entire documents regarding the Terms and Conditions
of the use of a particular service; in doing so, every citizen will be able to
know what a company can do with the data provided by him.
Today's reality takes digital
All in all, it remains virtually impossible to determine
whether or not it is worth posting as it is ultimately a personal choice .
There are browsers that better protect the user's privacy while browsing
online, such as DuckDuckGo; or even applications, social networks and forums
that do not require huge amounts of data, such as 4chan (however controversial
and peculiar it is), Signal and Discord, which allow you to maintain a certain
anonymity behind a code or a nickname. But the choice of these platforms over
the more conventional Facebook, Twitter, Google Chrome and more is up to the
user alone.
Nowadays the reality of today takes digitalto communicate
between us, companies and institutions. Not being the subject of the article,
we did not deal with the speed guaranteed by the digitization of services,
which allow you to create bank accounts, pay bills and perform many other
activities with just a few clicks; however this remains a significant advantage
of approaching the virtual world.
It is up to us to decides how much and how to show ourselves
to the world, just do it with respect for other citizens like us .