The Online Privacy Lie Is Unraveling

[steven36]

A new report into U.S. consumers’ attitude to the collection of personal data has highlighted the disconnect between commercial claims that web users are happy to trade privacy in exchange for ‘benefits’ like discounts. On the contrary, it asserts that a large majority of web users are not at all happy, but rather feel powerless to stop their data being harvested and used by marketers.

 

 

 

The report authors’ argue it’s this sense of resignation that is resulting in data tradeoffs taking place — rather than consumers performing careful cost-benefit analysis to weigh up the pros and cons of giving up their data (as marketers try to claim). They also found that where consumers were most informed about marketing practices they were also more likely to be resigned to not being able to do anything to prevent their data being harvested.

 

“Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them. Our study reveals that more than half do not want to lose control over their information but also believe this loss of control has already happened,” the authors write.

 

By misrepresenting the American people and championing the tradeoff argument, marketers give policymakers false justifications for allowing the collection and use of all kinds of consumer data often in ways that the public find objectionable. Moreover, the futility we found, combined with a broad public fear about what companies can do with the data, portends serious difficulties not just for individuals but also — over time — for the institution of consumer commerce.”

 

“It is not difficult to predict widespread social tensions, and concerns about democratic access to the marketplace, if Americans continue to be resigned to a lack of control over how, when, and what marketers learn about them,” they add.

 

The report, entitled The Tradeoff Fallacy: How marketers are misrepresenting American consumers and opening them up to exploitation, is authored by three academics from the University of Pennsylvania, and is based on a representative national cell phone and wireline phone survey of more than 1,500 Americans age 18 and older who use the internet or email “at least occasionally”.

 

Key findings on American consumers include that —

• 91% disagree (77% of them strongly) that “If companies give me a discount, it is a fair exchange for them to collect information about me without my knowing”
• 71% disagree (53% of them strongly) that “It’s fair for an online or physical store to monitor what I’m doing online when I’m there, in exchange for letting me use the store’s wireless internet, or Wi-Fi, without charge.”
• 55% disagree (38% of them strongly) that “It’s okay if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me.”

 

The authors go on to note that “only about 4% agree or agree strongly” with all three of the above propositions. And even with a broader definition of “a belief in tradeoffs” they found just a fifth (21%) were comfortably accepting of the idea.  So the survey found very much a minority of consumers are happy with current data tradeoffs.

 

The report also flags up that large numbers (often a majority) of U.S. consumers are unaware of how their purchase and usage data can be sold on or shared with third parties without their permission or knowledge — in many instances falsely believing they have greater data protection rights than they are in fact afforded by law.

 

Examples the report notes include —

• 49% of American adults who use the Internet believe (incorrectly) that by law a supermarket must obtain a person’s permission before selling information about that person’s food purchases to other companies.
• 69% do not know that a pharmacy does not legally need a person’s permission to sell information about the over-the-counter drugs that person buys.
• 65% do not know that the statement “When a website has a privacy policy, it means the site will not share my information with other websites and companies without my permission” is false.
• 55% do not know it is legal for an online store to charge different people different prices at the same time of day.
• 62% do not know that price-comparison sites like Expedia or Orbitz are not legally required to include the lowest travel prices

 

Data-mining in the spotlight

One thing is clear: the great lie about online privacy is unraveling. The obfuscated commercial collection of vast amounts of personal data in exchange for ‘free’ services is gradually being revealed for what it is: a heist of unprecedented scale. Behind the bland, intellectually dishonest facade that claims there’s ‘nothing to see here’ gigantic data-mining apparatus have been manoeuvered into place, atop vast mountains of stolen personal data.

 

Stolen because it has never been made clear to consumers what is being taken, and how that information is being used. How can you consent to something you don’t know or understand? Informed consent requires transparency and an ability to control what happens. Both of which are systematically undermined by companies whose business models require that vast amounts of personal data be shoveled ceaselessly into their engines.

 

This is why regulators are increasingly focusing attention on the likes of Google and Facebook. And why companies with different business models, such as hardware maker Apple, are joining the chorus of condemnation. Cloud-based technology companies large and small have exploited and encouraged consumer ignorance, concealing their data-mining algorithms and processes inside proprietary black boxes labeled ‘commercially confidential’. The larger entities spend big on pumping out a steady stream of marketing misdirection — distracting their users with shiny new things, or proffering up hollow reassurances about how they don’t sell your personal data.

 

Make no mistake: this is equivocation. Google sells access to its surveillance intelligence on who users are via its ad-targeting apparatus — so it doesn’t need to sell actual data. Its intelligence on web users’ habits and routines and likes and dislikes is far more lucrative than handing over the digits of anyone’s phone number. (The company is also moving in the direction of becoming an online marketplace in its own right — by adding a buy button directly to mobile search results. So it’s intending to capture, process and convert more transactions itself — directly choreographing users’ commercial activity.)

These platforms also work to instill a feeling of impotence in users in various subtle ways, burying privacy settings within labyrinthine submenus. And technical information in unreadable terms and conditions. Doing everything they can to fog rather than fess up to the reality of the gigantic tradeoff lurking in the background. Yet slowly, but slowly this sophisticated surveillance apparatus is being dragged into the light.

 

The privacy costs involved for consumers who pay for ‘free’ services by consenting to invasive surveillance of what they say, where they go, who they know, what they like, what they watch, what they buy, have never been made clear by the companies involved in big data mining. But costs are becoming more apparent, as glimpses of the extent of commercial tracking activities leak out.

And as more questions are asked the discrepancy between the claim that there’s ‘nothing to see here’ vs the reality of sleepless surveillance apparatus peering over your shoulder, logging your pulse rate, reading your messages, noting what you look at, for how long and what you do next — and doing so to optimize the lifting of money out of your wallet — then the true consumer cost of ‘free’ becomes more visible than it has ever been.

 

The tradeoff lie is unraveling, as the scale and implications of the data heist are starting to be processed. One clear tipping point here is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden who, two years ago, risked life and liberty to reveal how the U.S. government (and many other governments) were involved in a massive, illegal logging of citizens’ digital communications. The documents he released also showed how commercial technology platforms had been appropriated and drawn into this secretive state surveillance complex. Once governments were implicated, it was only a matter of time before the big Internet platforms, with their mirror data-capturing apparatus, would face questions.

 

Snowden’s revelations have had various reforming political implications for surveillance in the U.S. and Europe. Tech companies have also been forced to take public stances — either to loudly defend user privacy, or be implicated by silence and inaction.

 

Another catalyst for increasing privacy concerns is the Internet of Things. A physical network of connected objects blinking and pinging notifications is itself a partial reveal of the extent of the digital surveillance apparatus that has been developed behind commercially closed doors. Modern consumer electronics are hermetically sealed black boxes engineered to conceal complexity. But the complexities of hooking all these ‘smart’ sensornet objects together, and placing so many data-sucking tentacles on display, in increasingly personal places (the home, the body) — starts to make surveillance infrastructure and its implications uncomfortably visible.

 

Plus this time it’s manifestly personal. It’s in your home and on your person — which adds to a growing feeling of being creeped out and spied upon. And as more and more studies highlight consumer concern about how personal data is being harvested and processed, regulators are also taking notice — and turning up the heat.

 

One response to growing consumer concerns about personal data came this week with Google launching a centralized dashboard for users to access (some) privacy settings. It’s far from perfect, and contains plentiful misdirection about the company’s motives, but it’s telling that this ad-fueled behemoth feels the need to be more pro-active in its presentation of its attitude and approach to user privacy.

 

Radical transparency

The Tradeoff report authors include a section at the end with suggestions for improving transparency around marketing processes, calling for “initiatives that will give members of the public the right and ability to learn what companies know about them, how they profile them, and what data lead to what personalized offers” — and for getting consumers “excited about using that right and ability”.

 

Among their suggestions to boost transparency and corporate openness are —

• Public interest organizations and government agencies developing clear definitions of transparency that reflect consumer concerns, and then systematically calling out companies regarding how well or badly they are doing based on these values, in order to help consumers ‘vote with their wallets’
• Activities to “dissect and report on the implications of privacy policies” — perhaps aided by crowdsourced initiatives — so that complex legalize is interpreted and implications explained for a consumer audience, again allowing for good practice to be praised (and vice versa)
• Advocating for consumers to gain access to the personal profiles companies create on them in order for them to understand how their data is being used

 

“As long as the algorithms companies implement to analyze and predict the future behaviors of individuals are hidden from public view, the potential for unwanted marketer exploitation of individuals’ data remains high. We therefore ought to consider it an individual’s right to access the profiles and scores companies use to create every personalized message and discount the individual receives,” the report adds.

“Companies will push back that giving out this information will expose trade secrets. We argue there are ways to carry this out while keeping their trade secrets intact.”

 

They’re not the only ones calling for algorithms to be pulled into view either — back in April the French Senate backed calls for Google to reveal the workings of its search ranking algorithms. In that instance the focus is commercial competition to ensure a level playing field, rather than user privacy per se, but it’s clear that more questions are being asked about the power of proprietary algorithms and the hidden hierarchies they create.

 

Startups should absolutely see the debunking of the myth that consumers are happy to trade privacy for free services as a fresh opportunity for disruption — to build services that stand out because they aren’t predicated on the assumption that consumers can and should be tricked into handing over data and having their privacy undermined on the sly.

Services that stand upon a futureproofed foundation where operational transparency inculcates user trust — setting these businesses up for bona fide data exchanges, rather than shadowy tradeoffs.

 

By Natasha Lomas

https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-is-unraveling/

 

[straycat19]

11 hours ago, steven36 said:

based on a representative national cell phone and wireline phone survey of more than 1,500 Americans

 

That's an oxymoron.  They used telemarketing techniques to do a survey on online privacy.  Telemarketing is half the problem and invalidates their survey.  People who accept phone calls from companies or individuals they don't know personally are providing information to these very same people, and as a minimum, they are at least validating their phone number.  So the very people they really should have been surveying are the ones who would never have accepted their call to begin with.

[steven36]

8 hours ago, straycat19 said:

 

That's an oxymoron.  They used telemarketing techniques to do a survey on online privacy.  Telemarketing is half the problem and invalidates their survey.  People who accept phone calls from companies or individuals they don't know personally are providing information to these very same people, and as a minimum, they are at least validating their phone number.  So the very people they really should have been surveying are the ones who would never have accepted their call to begin with.

I dont know why anyone would ever answer a  telemarketer  but really that dont invalidate there survey . Being on the phone line and being  on the internet is not the same thing most  people have caller id  and if they answer it is because they want too.  Advertising on the internet   is not so cut and dry much of it you cant see at all, and iI know people  who never answer telemarketers  but they go right on the internet part of there phone or there computer and they have no earthly idea that companies are spying on them in the background .

 

So you're argument is invalid  because the phone dont have nothing to do with internet privacy  unless you're ISP is you're phone provider. Soon in the USA you're  isp is going to be spying on you as well so you will need a vpn  or tor just too surf the internet  without you're own isp harvesting you're data. Is this topic a threat to you are you one those people who examines peoples data for a living ?

 

The ones in there now say Net neutrality hurts health care and helps porn so  it looks like ISPs  will be able keep  a monopoly on rural areas and spy on everyone soon. Many places you dont have a choice of with internet you use and isps  wants to get into the data harvesting business just like Microsoft got into it after they seen Google, Facebook   and others getting rich off it  in the name of free. Microsoft was late too the game , Many of you cry about Microsoft doing it  and you have the balls to say it's invalid? when you gave you're privacy up to other actors years ago. I'm glad to see people are starting to catch on to this problem we have but it do seem too be about 7 years too  late .

 

There's lots of us who do care and i read about it and interact with people who do all the time and try too do my part to do what i can to protect what little privacy. i have from these businesses . Just because you dont care dont mean others dont that just means  you  fall in that bracket that dont care really. I dont know who you are for all I know you may get paid from spying on people. Some of the things you said on here makes it sound as if you do.. People who debate people rights to have privacy sounds like a shill is what i'm saying.

 

If anything you responding to this topic in such a manor  were you're comparing telemarketing witch there's the do not call list and caller id to data harvesting you cant see makes it more valid because you are talking about things you have control over . No one has control over fortune 500 businesses spying on them dude! You most likely think a ad blocker stops Google from spying on you too if you use Google Chrome?  When the spyware is baked in and it only stops some non google entities from spying  on you. .Many have a illusion of privacy is all.