What is your privacy worth?
By Dr Chris Merritt and Dr Richard Wolman
Humans are good at many things. But understanding data privacy is not one of them. For instance, nearly two-thirds of us think that if a company has a privacy policy, that means it won’t take our data. This is about as wrong as we could be.
Big Tech firms are harvesting data about us constantly, often without our explicit consent. And they make huge profits from it. Most of the time, we’re not aware of what’s going on. It’s only when there’s an invasive breach of our privacy that we notice.
Sometimes, this takes the form of an ‘uncanny valley’ moment — such as when a thing we just talked about is advertised to us and we feel creeped out. Other times, it’s just a good old-fashioned exposé that grabs our attention — like the recent New York Times revelations about Facebook giving more than 150 companies access to its users’ personal data, including private messages.
The privacy paradox
Why don’t we take action? Well, one reason is the privacy paradox. When asked, most of us say we care deeply about privacy — it cuts to the heart of our personal freedom. We advocate strong policies, tight controls. We even tell economists that we’re willing to pay more to have privacy in our online transactions.
Then, in the next moment, we do the opposite. We over-share online — often out of boredom, loneliness, or the desire for prestige. We unthinkingly consent to firms taking our data — including the firms we’re not dealing with directly — and selling it on. And we fail to manage our privacy settings on hardware, apps and websites.
The result of this mis-match between our beliefs and behaviour is that Big Tech hoovers up our data and monetises it. This works: the FAANGs are among the planet’s most profitable corporations.
A substantial proportion of those profits — particularly for Facebook and Google — come from selling user data for advertising. And yet, the user rarely consents explicitly to the data harvesting, and almost never sees a direct personal benefit.
Now do you feel like doing something about it?
What to do?
There are five ways we can deal with Big Tech’s corporate invasion of our privacy:
1. Change privacy settings. This can make a small difference, but often privacy settings are hard to find and even harder to change — particularly if you want the full functionality of a site or app. And critics have described privacy settings as a ‘walled garden’ for tech firms, giving the illusion of control but only allowing you to make changes the companies allow — while they retain overall control. So, what else is there?
2. Opt out altogether. This may not be as extreme as the ‘Disconnect’ movement would suggest: practically going offline is neither realistic nor desirable for most of us today. (I can’t remember the last time I stood in a queue at a bank…) Deleting some social media accounts and, for instance, not logging into open Wi-Fi will limit your exposure. But in an era of ‘networked privacy’, Big Tech can still gather data about you through your friends and contacts. It only needs one contact to consent to unfettered access and your data is no longer yours. So, we need something more.
3. Use tech against tech. Add-ons can help maintain some data privacy. For example, ad blockers like Ghostery or Privacy Badger stop most third-party tracking — reducing creepy targeted ads, speeding up our browsing and slowing down corporate profits from our data. Private browsing windows and VPNs can stop cookies getting in and location data leaking out. Mostly, these tools are made by Little Tech. And right now, in this David versus Goliath battle, government legislation generally protects Big Tech. Write some code to block data harvesting and you may find you’ve broken the law. So, do we need to do something about those laws?
4. Change legislation. Only governments can do this, but people often have the power to influence politicians. If that sounds like a reach, look at recent protests in Paris to see the power of collective action and mobilisation. We can advocate for rules that protect us from exploitation rather than facilitating it. We need laws that give us control over our own data, not keep us in the dark on how and why it’s harvested and used.
5. Demand some benefits. The idea of redistributing corporate profits to tech users is gaining ground. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes suggested implementing a ‘data dividend’ — a share of profits to users whose data were sold for advertising revenue. A more complex (but more realistic) system involves receiving credits in exchange for data. Lithuanian company Lympo gives users who supply their health data cryptocurrency to buy exercise and nutritional products. This is a free-market solution to the privacy-profit problem.
Big Tech is currently facing a backlash for the negative consequences of excessive device and platform use. Several companies are starting to change their mantras on user experience — emphasising quality over quantity of time spent and building in long-use warnings. Could data privacy go the same way?
Corporations may have to sacrifice some short-term profit to protect consumer privacy, but long-term benefits of improved reputation, trust and consumer relationships may offset this. Perhaps putting people first might halt the damage being done by each new privacy breach and data harvesting scandal.
It’s time Big Tech firms got some digital humanism on their agendas. The way law suits and press coverage are going, rethinking user privacy could be the best way to ensure their own long-term success.
In the meantime, we’ve listed five ways here that we can tackle corporate data harvesting. Let’s make a start.
What is your privacy worth?
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