The current relationship between the average consumer of digital products and services has a complex relationship with their data. One on hand, giving up some of your personal data in order to gain a better more personalized experience seems like a fair trade off. However, I think a lot of people, myself included, have a poor understanding of just how much of our data is being collected and monitored. One slightly startling example I found was described in the New York Times article linked below. This article examined how supposedly “depersonalized” or anonymous location data is not as secure as it may appear. By using a database which held a lot of this cell-phone location data in New York they were able to discover the identity of a supposedly “anonymous” user. Reading this article was slightly unnerving, but simultaneously very interesting and it includes some really cool graphics so I’d highly recommend reading the original article.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-data-privacy-apps.html
The idea of location data being shared and sold essentially translates as our identities being shared and sold. This is terrifying, largely because it often happens without awareness or consent. It is very unnerving to conceptualize how we are quite literally being watched all the time. If this was retold to us as a dystopian world in which powerful institutions know where everyone lives, works, visits, etc. then we would brush it off as unrealistic, but it is actively occurring as we speak. Crime scenes were mentioned in the article, which makes me wonder if this location data could be used for good, to figure out who was at a crime scene when a crime was committed. But this location data collection has largely negative effects, especially due to confusion and lack of transparency surrounding data collection practices.
I like the idea of consumers having a “complex relationship” with their data. I think this is completely true. While the negative side of having your data viewed, processed and monitored is obvious and scary, people tend to forget how this could be a good thing. Products that you want or even need may become more accessible to you because of this monitoring. I think of the Tiktok algorithm. A lot of the comany’s success has to do with how they can tailor you “for you page” to your exact preferences based on liked posts and viewing time. Because of this, the videos that users view are likely to line up with their senses of humor, thus enhancing their experienced on the app.
It’s very true that most people don’t realize how much of their personal data is being tracked and monitored. I read the New York Times article that you included in your post and while it was very illuminating, it was also unsettling. I never really thought about how if you share your location with an app (for the purpose of traffic information or something similar), your data is also being shared and sold to various companies. The example of Lisa Magrin is so interesting because the Times was able to so easily uncover her identity based on her data and discover the most intimate details about her life. Businesses say that they are interested in purchasing data only for the patterns, rather than the identities of individuals, but, if anyone wanted to, it is so simple to learn of someone’s personal life and identity, as cell phones track your location every couple of seconds. This article really emphasizes how, with the current role of technology in our society, nobody really has much privacy anymore.
I agree with the the idea that people remain very unaware of just how much data they are actually offering up. Personally, I feel as though I fall into that category as well. Before talking about “data” in this class, I rarely had people actually explain what has been going on to me in-depth. Hearing about the supposedly “anonymous” user brings up a lot of nerves. The fact that they were able to eventually figure out the identity of somebody that was promised would remain anonymous shows us that nobody is truly safe. Our data is going to continue to be constantly taken and it is very difficult to figure just how much is available to the companies collecting it.
And as bad as the NY Times visualization makes it seem, it’s a small scale compared to the millions of data points captured across multiple platforms on each of us.