Let Me Mind Your Business
The age of surveillance is upon us as there is little you can do online anymore, that actually remains private. Every bit of data presented online is collected, stored and used to either exploit or improve the users it came from. The ethical or unethical use of data all depends on how the data is collected and how it ends up being used.
When I tap my opal card on and off for public transport, it builds a memory of every route I have used and every destination that I have visited. Now if we open this simple action to the entire population of Sydney, it suddenly becomes a great deal of data accessible for Transport NSW. Suddenly, the most popular times for public transport and the most used services daily are available for inspection. This doesn’t inherently become a bad thing, as depending on the use of this data, it can benefit Transport NSW and all of Sydney.
The data does not need to be broken down to a personal level to improve the system, but can be undertaken in an ethical manner through the investigation of the collective data. I personally would be happy for my trip locations to be taken into account when fixing timetables and improving efficiency as it only requires the location I tap on and off, which could benefit the entire system overall.
The interesting thing is either how little people to seem to care, or else not know about the data they allow to be collected. On either end of the spectrum, you have the use of vpn’s and taping over laptop cameras as a use of protection, whilst others are happy to present their personal details to any platform that requires it. This presents the argument of convenience leading to most people landing somewhere in the middle. With Google, I can allow it to remember all my passwords for my social media sites and my bank account, because I’m caught in the trap of being a little to lazy to muster the effort to type my own password in, and I’m certainly not alone.
The same thing can be said with social media platforms like Facebook. Everything that I like, comment or share is collected for future use in which I have my own special marketing team to target me. Just searching for different monitors online, flooded my laptop with endless adverts for every style available. My over reliance on data collection for convenience makes me a target if there are future data leaks.
The collection of data is not necessarily bad, it is how it is used that we need to have an impact on. Whether you like it or not our data is being collected and we have to make sure that we understand the implications of this collection. We don’t just have to hope for a better future where our data is exploited in ways we can’t control, we can make the difference by educating ourselves and understanding where we stand as well as what we can do as a collective.
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