The 1st Step is Awareness
It’s not illegal. This is what I frequently hear from companies regarding the use of the personal data they collect on you and me. Really, it’s not illegal — that’s your standard. It’s not illegal to trick me into giving up my geolocation on an application that doesn’t require my location for its services. It’s not illegal to offer me a deal that’s so good I accept it, give you my credit card (because you said you wouldn’t charge me unless I want you to), and then I can’t figure out how to unsubscribe, cancel, delete, or stop the recurring charges to my credit card. It’s not illegal for respected professionals to give their professional opinion on the unpopular side of a subject like privacy and security, animal cruelty, or COVID and then have to endure attacks and harassment from the community regarding their accurate, professional but unpopular analysis. It’s not illegal for organizations to collect your contact information so they can provide you a service; but do they also need behavior and usage data including individuals’ use of their website and services, browsing patterns, and information on how long they might spend on their webpages? Do they also need their clickstream including the date and time of these activities, or the web search used to locate and navigate to that website? Most importantly, do you want them to share all this information with third parties you don’t know about?
We’ve all heard the old saying, it’s not whether you CAN do it — it’s whether or not you SHOULD do it. This is the problem we have when companies use personal data in ways people do not expect. We all want companies to update their privacy notices and do a better job of explaining what personal data they collected and what they do with it. But in addition to being more transparent about their personal data processing activities, companies need to stop using personal data in ways that don’t align with the individuals’ understanding of its use. If you think your mom would be surprised by the use of her information in the way you are proposing, you might want to rethink its use.
According to a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center*, most Americans think they have little to no control over their personal data, the risk of all that overcollection of personal data outweighs the personal benefit to them, and furthermore, they are concerned about how it is going to be used. Do you want your fitness tracking app to share your personal data with medical researchers so they can better understand the correlation between diseases and daily activity? That sounds like a good idea, but can the fitness tracking app easily get to that level of granularity for your consent? Would you also want that same data shared with a data broker who can then target advertisements to you? What about sharing that data with your insurance company to help you manage your health insurance rates?
So what can we do about this? I believe the first thing is awareness. You can’t fix something you don’t know about so we have to start by educating ourselves about these practices. Privacy SWAN Consulting offers four different training courses to help you learn how to make better decisions regarding the personal data that you process. Check out our website for more information on the type of training that’s right for you.
2019 study Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-and-privacy-concerned-confused-and-feeling-lack-of-control-over-their-personal-information/