Data privacy: Why is our personal data so vulnerable?
Published on June 3, 2022
Data privacy is frequently a news topic. “Company X has been hacked and millions of data entries from users have been stolen!” Those headlines have become all too common on social media, TV news, and really all sources of information we consume every day.
But among the sea of information, we sometimes lose track of a very relevant matter: Why did Company X had so much data in the first place? Being completely honest, if any entity has that much information about their users, the concept we talk about should no longer be “privacy” but rather “information control”.
Privacy is defined as what is “intimate and particular”, meaning that if banks, governments, agencies, tech companies, and social networks have that information, it is no longer “intimate” nor “particular”, and the line dividing “privacy” from “public” becomes rather blur.
People may claim that they decided to share that information with some entities, so it still is a privacy matter. However, was it really a free choice? Or was it “mandatory” so that you could live your life without much trouble?
The illusion of data privacy
When someone decides to print a billboard with their name on it, that is free choice. When someone is forced to give their information to others to do their daily job, like telling people where you are, all the time, every day (if you are a driver from a transportation app), that is no longer a choice.
Conditioning services to people revealing unnecessary information (such as location if all you want to do is stream music) falls on the “information control” category, rather than “privacy”.
So, how these thoughts help us answer our main question?
Well, in most cases, the discourse regarding data privacy moves on the legal ground, completely overlooking the way our current technology works, and the economic motivations that are behind most of the decisions made when dealing with data privacy issues.
Why is data privacy so vulnerable?
Basically, because all algorithms that we have nowadays work better when they have more data to work with. What does it mean they work better? That depends on their goal, but here are two clear examples: for an e-commerce site, an algorithm working better means that when you are buying a new product, they will probably recommend other items that you may want to buy, compared to some you may not like very much. Or in the case of a maps app, it means they may give you the best route to getting to your destiny.
Under any of the scenarios, the better the recommendations the more money the company providing you with the service receives. In the first case, because you will probably buy more products; second because that data may later be used to show you advertisements of businesses near your area (advertisements that were paid for by other businesses).
In any case, the more information you give, the more money the service providers get – and you also get a better service, of course. So, what possible incentive would the law have to sever the creation of wealth?
Because there is no clear incentive to ask companies to require less data, and because the technology behind it works better with more information, governments, companies, and other entities have tried doing the second-best thing: transforming the issue into a legal matter to avoid data falling “into the wrong hands”. That is why the European Union has tried to force Meta into leaving their data in European soil, or why Trump tried to ban TikTok in the United States unless it was bought by a US corporation, saying it was a “national security” problem. In both cases, they were very careful to talk about “privacy” and not “information control”.
What is the solution?
Information control may be a legal problem. Privacy isn’t. The real privacy issue will be solved once tech companies develop algorithms that need less data to work better, or at least equally well, or when there is a true democratization of information, but that is a different discussion.
At X Eleva Group, we genuinely worry about our users’ privacy. In each of our services, we incorporate this critical vision, always taking care of the true interest of our clients, knowing that every bit of information they share with us, it’s theirs, not ours.
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