Data Privacy — What is it that you’re losing?
Data privacy has become huge concern among users of all sorts of products and services. It seems only recently, that most of us have realised that how vulnerable we are for exploitation from the kind and magnitude of data that we put online. The implications of sharing data, and living in a world where we are our data, are varied. In this post, I’ll talk about the ways in which our data is shared, and if and when we should worry about our data being shared.
While there have been many public issues of misuse of data, very few have been as sinister as the Cambridge Analytica. Before I talk about it, I’d first talk about what is that we are handing over the companies like Facebook and Google. Google or Facebook, the core of their business model is based on being able to show relevant advertisements.
Take for example, Facebook. Its revenue model, is based on how many advertisers it can attract. Facebook should be able to push the right sort of ads to the most relevant of the customers, in order to attract more and more adverts. Now, how does it do that? It analyzes your likes and your levels of engagements on the different types of content present on the platform, and pushes the kinds of ads on your newsfeed which you are more likely to click-through.
In order to ‘label’ you as the kind of customer who would want to see an ad, it doesn’t stop at your likes and dislikes though. It also analyzes your location, the likes and dislikes of your Facebook friends and their locations. For example, if you step into an H&M store, you’d start seeing ads from H&M. And you will see them, not just on Facebook but also on Instagram. Instagram is owned by Facebook and so is WhatsApp.
So, once I was exchanging texts with my friend, regarding a holiday trip to a certain state in India. And, later that day when I opened my Facebook, I see ads on Holiday Packages to the exact same state. Clearly, my IMs have been used to target me for those ads.
The question of course, is whether you should be worried about this? In a data-idyllic world, me seeing the ads that are relevant to me, is win-win for me and the advertisers. They reach out to the people who are most likely buy the products and services they are advertising, and I get to see the right kind of ad at the right time.
When we use the services of Google and Facebook, we leave a pattern. These companies use algorithms to show us ads which are more likely to yield to a sale. Sellers pay these companies to show their ads, and they keep on advertising themselves on these platforms, because Google and Facebook have a very high engagement time. Facebook and Google do not sell our data. These companies sell their services of “Showing the Most Relevant ad” to us.
Now, is that bad? I will make the case that, using analytics to give us what we want, when we want it, is a step forward and should be embraced. Google Maps’ Estimated Time of Arrival would not work, if Google didn’t collect location data on its users. I would not know which is the busiest hour at my gym, if Google didn’t give me a histogram of ‘number of devices present’ at my gym, which is again possible because of its location data. If I do get the best deals available for my trip to Kerela from an ad on Facebook, then what am I losing?
These advertising companies, in order to sell us the most relevant ads, have invented ways to categorize our behavior in unprecedented ways. Google and Facebook know more about me, than many of my closest family members. There is, of course, no personal information that Google and Facebook use. To their algorithms I’m an advertising ID, who is inclined to buying t-shirts with funny quotes. In that anonymity, I feel safe, and so should you.
I think, a lot of people are paranoid for no reason. Yes, the amount of data that private companies have, is staggering. As in the case of Cambridge Analytica, these data can be used to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities. However, at the end of the day, you can choose to ignore the information that you get from the social media. You can choose to ignore “News” which you get from your Facebook Newsfeed. Just stop endlessly playing videos on Facebook! You can choose to break out of your personalized bubble, by simply running Google searches on topics in a Private(Incognito) Window of your browser!
What can be learned from the Cambridge Analytica and the subsequent hue and cry, is that people did not know that their data was being used for anything substantial and that we ‘liked’ things for the purpose of liking. While companies should make it clear what they use the data for, we as consumers should understand that whatever we do in Google service or on any social media, can and will be used to direct ads at us.
The benefits that we get, from the analytics outweigh the risks. I would love to have a Google Assistant which knows how often I make grocery shopping trips, and reminds me when my next grocery run is. I will be delighted to see the time-table of busses for the bus stop I am waiting at as a notification when I am waiting there, and I’d love to know what is the exact time it will take me to reach the restaurant where my date’s waiting. And to make that world happen, we have to give access to our data, not to companies, but to their algorithms. And trust me, there are SO MANY of us, it is just impossible to target you personally. So, if you get creeped out by a very relevant Ad, don’t take it personally — it’s just the algorithm. No body is giving ‘you’ any attention!
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