Obviously sensitive information like addresses, credit cards, etc. should be protected, but I don’t understand why it’s considered a big deal when companies sell other data? Don’t they just sell things like how much time you spent staring at a picture before you scrolled?
In: Technology
Your doctor could snitch on you (for money) by telling your insurance “well, FormalSad7802 got their 3rd case of diarrhea this year already, clearly this is not a healthy person or a person that’s not making healthy choices” and then your insurance could raise your insurance premium, even though you just had bad luck this year and it’s totally not your fault.
This is bad for you.
Often sensitive information IS mixed in with this data. But youre right a majority of data Is purely for advertising purposes and not a big deal. I guess people see it no different to having a stranger just walk into your home and take pictures of things. What’s the big deal? It’s just pictures? But it’s still not comfortable and invasion of privacy.
Lets take amazon for example.
You search for books for self-help regarding mental health issues, gambling and debt on your amazon account. Amazon sells your search history. They also sell your purchase history but without any identifying information (order X for $100 on XX, order Y for $200 on YY, order Z for $500 on ZZ). They do however say it’s for the same account. Obviously you don’t know who that is.
Unless say your credit card company buys the data and matches the transaction totals and dates. Now your CC company knows about potential mental health issues, gambling and you’re likely concerned about debt.
Stuff like this is called de-anonymizing and is done regularly so what is sold can actually be linked to a specific person. Now imagine if healthcare/insurance did this (and they do.) Corporations will do **anything** to increase profits which means getting money from consumers (advertising in a way to get them addicted to something) or reducing costs to consumers (canceling insurance because of some stupid reason when internally it’s because they knew you were a high-risk before presenting)
When you piece together thousands of tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces of information about someone, it’s surprising just how clear a picture you can get of them.
You looking at picture x for x amount of time times 100000 and someother data they can get from you, can give companies a pretty good picture about who you are. In “good” cases this is just about advertising some brand to you, in bad cases they figure out your religion, political views, sexuality, work place and a lot of more things. With this data you can for example influence voting (this has already happend with Cambridge Analytica). Or “harass” people based on their religion this happens in some countries like China with Uyghurs. Find people that are of a certain sexuality that you dislike. Or something that (probably) hasnt happen yet but could happen in the US is figuring out who is pregnant (that is already pretty easy to determine) and in states where abortions are illegal prosecute people based on this data. Those are the extreme examples. Something else that could happen is that insurance companies could buy your data and figure out how often you work out or if you have signs of depression and increase your premimums based on that data.
The thing is that you can find out all those things based on information that you wouldnt consider sensitive like your scolling habbits.
Well, it’s extremely creepy, and leads to situation such as [this](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/). Creepy is in the eye of the beholder, though, so I won’t go any deeper into that. Let’s go into a bit more concrete stuff instead.
First off, the whole concept of “free market” has some baked in assumptions. One is that both sides have perfect information. That is, we both have access to the same information that is relevant to the transaction we’re making. Companies have much more information than consumers, which is why we need regulations around labels and such. If companies can buy consumer data wholesale when their own data isn’t readily available, it just makes that information difference even worse.
Second, who is allowed to use that data, and what for? When your bank tells you that “computer says no” to your loan application, are they basing that decision on data they bought from somebody else? Who validated that the data is correct? If it’s wrong, who’s responsible for fixing it?
Third, what happens when you buy data from multiple places, and put it all together? Information that was considered sensitive and wasn’t present in any of the individual sources can often be deduced from the combination of all sources.
The list goes on. It’s a _very_ complex issue that kind of just explodes into a bazillion problems like these when you start digging into it. You can either try to fix them, or you just say “let’s just not sell personal data at all”.
I think people get overly concerned about the wrong things.
Your bank shares pretty much all your transactions to the credit rating agencies, who leak like sieves, that is who you are, where you live, where you’ve lived, everything you spend except cash, how much cash you withdraw.
Here in the UK you can opt out of the banking data if you are wealthy and ask, but otherwise this is a given. The credit rating agencies have special dispensation in privacy law in the UK & EU.
Mobile phones track everywhere you go, you can only disable that by not carrying a working mobile.
A lot depends what it is used for, whilst it is used to try and market products, or decide on your credit score, it is probably fine, when they start using it to send you bespoke political messages, or to arrest you, not so cool.
>Don’t they just sell things like how much time you spent staring at a picture before you scrolled?
While “looked at picture for 12 minutes” isn’t sensitive, correlation might make it.
“Looked at picture of neighbors wife for 12 minutes”. “Looked at picture of nude model of same sex for 12 minutes” might be enough data to blackmail someone under many governments and social norms in some (or sadly, many) circles.
And that’s without starting to combine these datasets with other sources.
People tend to say the same about location data – why do I care that someone knows where I am? Until you start looking at “anonymous” data where you can clearly see people having affairs (which isn’t illegal, but a prime case for blackmailing someone), then returning to their home. If you have data that shows that “subject 48282 leaves this location every morning at 07:30” – and then “they travel to this location every morning”. Congratulations, you now know exactly who subject 48282 is, even without visiting any location and spying a bit.
What if your employeer knows that you suddenly went to a competitor’s office for 30 minutes one day because of a job interview. The coordinate in itself isn’t sensitive, but combined with knowing that you work for Company A and the coordinate is company B can make it sensitive (to you, at least).
Everyone I know uses ad blockers and ignores ads. No one seems to want to see them. I don’t get why so much money is spent for date either but clearly there must be profit in it or business’s wouldn’t be paying so much for it.
Give me your browsing data from your entire life on the internet.
I’m going to attach it to every resume you ever create. I’m going to give it to everyone you do business with. I’m going to give it to your parents, your spouse/Partner, and your priest.
Everyone in the entire world will know your every thought. Even the random fucked up ones.
Some shit should just be private.
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