Digital Privacy
Ripples Origin : We Can’t Trust Uber
A few decades back, one had to employ private detectives to go after someone to know what he does, who he meets etc. Arguably it was a good time, we had the sanctity of privacy to call our own. Come 21st century and in just first decade and a half, we are seriously fighting for an iota of privacy.
Today we have ubiquitous presence of Facebook in our lives, it knows about our friends, family, colleagues, our like patterns, our comment patterns, our sentence formation patterns, probably a glimpse of our thought patters (They know this better that ourselves). Google knows what we want to know, it also knows where we are at all the time. Foursquare / Swarm knows what we eat where we frequently visit. The public RSS feeds tell a lot about your blogging trends, your political affiliations and inclinations, to which we add another piece of the puzzle, location. The puzzle is becoming awfully complete now.
Buzzfeed reported that one of Uber’s executives had already looked up without permission rides taken by one of its own journalists. And according to The Washington Post, the company was so lax about such sensitive data that it even allowed a job applicant to view people’s rides, including those of a family member of a prominent politician. (The app is popular with members of Congress, among others.)
After the Uber executive’s statements, many took note of a 2012 post on the company’s blog that boasted of how Uber had tracked the rides of users who went somewhere other than home on Friday or Saturday nights, and left from the same address the next morning. It identified these “rides of glory” as potential one-night stands. (The blog post was later removed.)
Whenever you are not paying for any service, you are effectively the product. The amount of treasure any of these user bases have for these digital companies is really worth a research paper. Surprisingly we all know this, and still could not help but use these services with indifferent gusto. I guess now we have accepted that it is inevitable, then why, why should we persist?
I remember a video about safe banking which puts these facts so bluntly, that it is scary. What is the way out? is there any way out? Go Amish probably? I believe our only peace is to be judicious and pray considering we have little control over things in our own life. Our banks are online, our passports / PAN number are at government files which are open to attacks. Nothing is under lock and key well within the confines of your cozy abode, everything is out in the open and anyone’s game.
It is interesting to think, that it is a volume game now. Earlier you would be somewhat lax thinking what are the odds that you’re home would be targeted personally among the entire community you live in. The odds are about the same. Even though there is a huge data breach, what are the odds that your account credentials would be used by hackers, before you get to change them?
statistics and probabilities aside, it is still, Scary.
On a passing thought, I wonder if we can gather enough information about someone so as to pass a blind Turing Test among one’s friends?
