HOW TECHNOLOGY KILLING PRIVACY

John Alexander (2015)

Privacy concerns seem to come up daily in the news these days, whether it be government spying through the NSA or people willingly giving information about themselves away on social media. It seems as if no one has any privacy anymore. As actor Will Smith said in a recent interview on the show ‘Vecherniy Urgant’, “I was very dumb when I was 14. See, no Twitter, no Facebook when I was 14. So I was dumb, but I was dumb in private.” His view is a common one – that people, especially young people, are being exposed to privacy risks through their use of technology. Willingly given or not the formerly private information of the populace is being stored, tracked, and sold to buyers for both legal and illegal use. Though there are many stories in the news about privacy concerns the general public doesn’t seem to be worried, or are perhaps too ill-informed to be worried. Is this problem truly nothing to be concerned about, or is the lack of concern letting this problem spiral out of control?

Defining Privacy

The best place to start is with a definition of privacy in the context of technology. The best way to describe privacy in this context is in terms of “restricted access/limited control” (Tavani and Moor 2001). Restricted access means that there is a form of privacy where some people are allowed access and others are not, so a person can stop others from viewing their information if they so choose. It is reasonable to expect the same amount of privacy in these situations that one would have if not using technology. To ensure control over their personal data, individuals need to have what is called limited control over their personal data so that they can ensure restricted access. This can be as simple as being able to toggle privacy settings on a Facebook page. The reason this definition is important is because there has always been a tradeoff between a loss of privacy and a perceived benefit or convenience. If a person doesn’t  have ownership of their privacy, they don’t have anything to trade within this scenario.

However, when using a website, the ‘control’ a user may feel they have may just be an illusion. Even with all of the privacy settings turned on, there is no guarantee that Facebook isn’t going to use your data. From both the side of the consumer and the companies that want the consumer information, there is a cost-benefit analysis to be done. Every time a person decides to join a new social network, they have decided that they are willing to hand over certain personal information about themselves so they can easily stay connected with their friends and family. They pay the cost of handing over some personal information for what they see as the benefit of being in touch with their friends and family (Ng-Kruelle 2002). A cost benefit like this is totally up to the individual – a person that is very concerned with their personal privacy may not think this tradeoff is worth it and because of this may abstain from creating a Facebook profile.

Who is Taking Our Information?

There are a number of different groups looking to gather information on people, because information can lead to knowledge and knowledge is power. Luckily for the people looking for information, the Internet makes it easy to gather a large amount of information quickly. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange described the Internet as the “greatest spying machine the world has ever seen” (Kingsley 2011). It is easy to see why he thinks that this is the case. Some of the organizations looking to collect user data are Facebook, Google, and the National Security Administration of the United States.

The National Security Administration (NSA) is an organization that has roots in code breaking in World War I and World War II, but has grown into one of the largest government organizations in terms of staff and funding. There are estimates that say that the NSA has nearly 40,000 employees and an estimated budget of $11 billion, though it is probably more than that (Verble 2014). Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NSA was discreetly authorized to spy on American citizens without a warrant to do so, which has stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Though the NSA seems to continuously get surveillance powers stripped and then later secretly given back, it seems that the NSA continues to spy on people both domestically and abroad without any public uproar. However, the NSA has been caught spying on foreign leaders – including those that are supposed to be our allies.

Two other major players – Google and Facebook – have similar tactics and similar goals. Both companies provide a number of services to users free of charge, because their primary source of revenue is selling user information to advertisers. These companies have the capability to track user traffic and are essentially giant databases filled with user information that can be mined and sold for a profit. While Google and Facebook aren’t the only websites that do this, they are two of the major players that come up when user privacy is discussed. Just to check how much Google knows about you, you can check your ‘Google Ads’ settings where they use the data they have collected on you to guess your age, gender, and interests. This is the information that Google uses to tailor ads to everyone that uses their services.

Should we be Worried?

The increase in information gathering, with or without the knowledge and consent of the people whose information is being gathered, is definitely cause for alarm. However, different demographics of people have varying levels of concern when it comes to information privacy. Younger people, for example, are less likely to be concerned about Internet privacy than their older counterparts, even though they are more likely to know that their information is being collected and tracked. Females are more likely to be concerned with Internet privacy than males, and people with more education are less likely to be concerned (Zukowski 2007).

Interestingly, the more familiar with the Internet the person seems to be, the more comfortable they seem to be with their personal data being collected. The issue with user data collection is the risk of misuse, and what different people/companies view as proper use of personal information. For example, insurance companies have been mining for client data to look for possible health risks, and have been accused of changing client rates based on the data they have mined. This is different than a client disclosing their own health risks as the information gathered by the insurance company may be inaccurate, and may lead to clients being overcharged for their insurance. Another situation of a company overreaching is when Target revealed a pregnancy of a teenaged girl to her father when they sent a “congratulations” to her home after noticing that she recently bought larger handbags, tissues, and headache pills. While marketers clearly thought that it was an acceptable marketing ploy, many people saw it as a clear invasion of privacy and an abuse of data mining (Virani 2015).

Something to consider when you think of your privacy when using the Internet is how these companies like Facebook make money – essentially by selling “you”. In fact, Facebook has been caught showing false endorsements from a user’s friends for products they have been paid to advertise, and don’t tell you when they do so (Virani 2015). What happens in these situations is that an ad will appear on user A’s Facebook, claiming that user B recommends a product to them, when in reality user B has probably never used the product being endorsed by “them” and has no idea that their name is being used to advertise a product.

Facebook builds an unnervingly accurate model of who you are as a person by reading your statuses, private messages, and likes. Facebook can also track you on any page that has a plug-in ‘like this on Facebook’ button, following you around the web outside of Facebook to gather more data on you. All of this data is being collected on users, and Facebook is just one of the many companies collecting data. This is scary, because these companies make money by selling user data, and the laws can’t keep up with the technology when it comes to the Internet. Users have no idea what the companies collecting data are going to do with it. It is hard to stop them from doing anything because there are few laws, if any, to prevent the collection and sale of user data. The fact that companies are making money from your personal information, and that there are very few limitations to what they can do with that information, should be very concerning.

 In many cases the only thing holding these companies back is the bad PR they  would get if they got found doing something that many would consider to be unethical. Many companies are already doing unethical things (or have the potential to do unethical things) hidden away in long terms of use agreements that no regular user reads. Unless something changes or something is done to stop it, the whole situation could easily spiral out of control and become a much bigger issue than it already is. However, there would have to be a massive push for the protection of privacy from average citizens for any changes to occur. The companies won’t back off unless people protest, and the government won’t make any laws regarding privacy unless the citizens demand it

Source: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1430&context=honorsprojects

Alexander, John, "How Technology is Killing Privacy" (2015). Honors Projects. 397.

http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/397