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The Future of Data Collection - What Should be Done?

remilia

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
68
Data collection is a huge business in the modern age. It never really occurred to me just how big data collection is until I read about this article about new cars about a year ago. According to the article, data collected from trips in the car could potentially be more valuable than the car itself!

Recently, there have been several controversies regarding data collection, privacy, and consent. To list a few:
- Facebook Paid Teens To Download Data Collection App
- Google Collects Location Data Even When Location Is Disabled
- Amazon and Facebook Reportedly Shared Data With Each Other

With the advent of the internet and social media, companies now have the ability to create detailed profiles on people. This information includes name, family, friends, locations, routines, products bought/sold, interests, demographics, etc. As the largest data companies grow larger and larger, even those not registered to their services can find their data collected. Some of this information is given consensually, but some is given with shoddy consent or without consent at all. It seems that as time passes there are fewer and fewer opportunities to escape having your data collected. Don't want your location collected? Good luck finding a phone that doesn't do that. Don't want your search history collected? Go out of your way to use a different search engine and avoid popular services. Don't want your product history collected? Avoid shopping at the largest supplier of goods online. Even indirectly, you must avoid being in friends' photos to avoid that data being collected, for example.

It seems data collection is growing more and more omnipresent. Data collection companies are making more money and expanding their reach, data collecting services are merging with others, and the Internet of Things is even bringing data collection into everyday gadgets like refrigerators, home locks, and televisions.

With the way things are going, I have a question:

- Is data collection becoming too intrusive? If so, what can we do to prevent this from continuing?

Additional areas to explore:
- Do we have a right to data privacy, or is our data free for anyone to collect?
- Should there be government/private intervention in companies collecting data?
- If data collection continues at its current rate, what do you think the future will look like in terms of how data is collected and how it is used?
 

InfiniteRE

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 4, 2018
Messages
63
Love that this is brought up. I am a graduate in this field of study.

To answer your first question, yes it is very intrusive and unfortunately not right now there is nothing we can do about it. The FCC back in June of 2017 has repealed the net neutrality laws that prevent our ISP's from tracking anything we do on the internet. When I mean tracking, they arent spying on you with a camera, Your ISP tracks what IP addresses you contact, which effectively means they know the web sites you're visiting. However this law is still being fought today, and I encourage everyone to help fight for net neutrality back.

Back on topic, There are a lot of companies that horde information and sell it to other companies for marketing purposes and profits. Selling information is a very lucrative industry that many companies are willing to pay for, which government won't intervene no matter how unethical it is. How they get away with these tactics is all in the acceptable use policies that nobody ever reads and hits accept, this legally gives them every right to do whatever they want with your information.

My possible solutions are to use a VPN which will mask your IP address and browse the web safely. Id also like to reiterate supporting net neutrality, there are several online platforms and petitions to where your voice can be heard.
 
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Arle Nadja

Prodigy Sorceress & Girl Power Icon
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Messages
122
Location
Virginia
NNID
ChaoticMarin
3DS FC
1547-5230-3937
Facebook strikes me as a particularly unethical company. When I was taught how to stay safe on the internet back in ...middle school? That lesson boiled down to two things:
  1. If you find yourself surrounded by sketchy individuals online, get away from them. Get off the computer if you have to. Not really relevant to the discussion at hand.
  2. Don't post your personal information online.
Examples included: Your name, especially your full name. Your address. Pictures of yourself.

And y'know what? Unless I was shopping or banking online, I have never posted anything more than my first name. One time I uploaded a picture of one of my girl friends to my Imgur account so that an artist I was working with could use it as a reference for a gift I was going to give her. I gave the link to them privately, thinking this was relatively safe. My Imgur account is only used to upload and privately share images, after all. However, a man I had casually talked with a handful of times stalked my Imgur account, found the image, assumed it must be me and messaged me out of the blue to tell me how hot I was and all that noise. If you think that sounds terrifying and/or disgusting, you are correct. It is both. I have no doubt in my mind that these rules have protected me from lots of horrible, unwanted attention. Not only from stalkers, but from creeps in general. I usually don't get a whole lot of attention from the super creepy types specifically because of the lack of pictures.

You may notice that all of that information except maybe pictures of yourself is required to use Facebook. If you register for Facebook and try to protect your privacy by staying anonymous, they will ban you. That alone is unethical in my eyes. I don't find it appropriate for a website to publicly share any of that information. Not even your name. I should not be required to invite stalkers to my home just to connect with my family online. And regardless of what Facebook may say to the contrary, my experience with their staff is that they do not have adequate policies in place to protect people who may have reason to believe that revealing information about themselves may put them in danger.

And there's more to it too. Facebook's real name policy is routinely used to harass trans people using their service. Namely, people with unsavory views towards trans people will report trans people who have transitioned to a name matching their new gender, and this will bring Facebook down on those people, forcing them to use their "real" name if they don't want to be banned. None of this is a secret. It's been reported on. I've experienced it personally. It's boldly and publicly stated by Facebook. But I think it's very unethical all the same. Just because a company is open about doing it and a large amount of people accept it, that doesn't make it ethical in my eyes.

Apologies if that's a slightly different take on the topic at hand. I've never really considered myself interesting enough to spy on, so my thoughts on Facebook's privacy policies is most of what I have to contribute. Other than my credit card information, there's nothing I really put online that I would really care about if it were, say, mishandled by a company and made public. I do think that there is a place for antitrust laws here. If only the USA were less tolerant of privacy invasion on principle maybe we could actually curtail these practices. However, given the precedent set by the patriot act and all the ways that has built up into what we have today, I'm unsure how, politically speaking, we could change the culture so that it becomes possible to unite in greater numbers around issues like this. My first thought was a massive data breach unlike any we've seen thusfar. But would people really care if passwords/credit card info wasn't exposed? Because that changes it from a privacy to a security issue, meaning backlash is likely to center around security issues and damages, rather than privacy concerns.
 
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Lore

Infinite Gravity
BRoomer
Joined
Mar 5, 2008
Messages
14,137
Location
Formerly 'Werekill' and 'NeoTermina'
China's new "social point" system is a chilling reminder of how far privacy invasion can go. I firmly believe that we need to curtail data collection and privacy breaches.

One issue, however, is algorithmic data collection, where it uses your browsing habits to form a profile of you. This tech has rapidly improved in the past few years, and I'm not sure where it is going to stop. This is especially true with gps data, where recently it has been found that 911-centric gps data was being collected and sold from cell phones.

It's already nearly at the point where you have to give up on a smart phone, a true treasure of technology and connectivity, in order to not be tracked. There are very few options that don't track you, and that total will continue to shrink.
 

remilia

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
68
China's new "social point" system is a chilling reminder of how far privacy invasion can go. I firmly believe that we need to curtail data collection and privacy breaches.

One issue, however, is algorithmic data collection, where it uses your browsing habits to form a profile of you. This tech has rapidly improved in the past few years, and I'm not sure where it is going to stop. This is especially true with gps data, where recently it has been found that 911-centric gps data was being collected and sold from cell phones.

It's already nearly at the point where you have to give up on a smart phone, a true treasure of technology and connectivity, in order to not be tracked. There are very few options that don't track you, and that total will continue to shrink.
The social points thing sounds absolutely dystopian. Wow.
This is one of the big dilemmas: Facebook, Google, etc are corporations first. If need be, we (at least, should) have the power to step in at some point and say "ok, this is harmful to our citizens and needs to be controlled in some way." Y'know, if worse gets to worse.
But China's social points system is a governmental proposition. How do you stop something like that?
From what it looks like it doesn't seem like there's an "opt out" that will be available...
 
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Lore

Infinite Gravity
BRoomer
Joined
Mar 5, 2008
Messages
14,137
Location
Formerly 'Werekill' and 'NeoTermina'
Exactly, it's not something you can "opt out" of when it is a Government program.

China is horrible in terms of human rights, and it is only sliding further downwards. It's just not as talked about because of their economic power and relations.
 

Sucumbio

Smash Giant
Moderator
Writing Team
Joined
Oct 7, 2008
Messages
8,133
Location
Icerim Mountains
The more money you have the more you have to spend hiding it.

Data is monetized.

Math.

So the future of money is what's to be done. And obliterating it is my best suggestion except for the exchange of antiquities.
 
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