How do you feel about Private data collection?

[~SnowAngel~]

This is a very, very broad topic that would be too dense to go in depth in one post. I'm sure most of you are aware of the fact that big companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Cellphone companies, etc.) collect your "personal data" and use it for marketing, and shaping your habits and sometimes your thoughts. This isn't meant as a "be afraid" topic, but more of an awareness. Btw, you can also opt out of many forms of advertisement if you just search (credit cards in the mail, cellphone data collection, email spam, etc).

My question is: are you at all concerned about why and how they are using this data?

People are so used to giving away their personal information without a second thought. We agree to terms that nobody reads, fail to question the vague language used in some privacy statements, and don't think about why companies are more interested in your information than anyone else.
There are a few short answers to why they want your data.

1) They use your data to predict your behavior, influence your decisions, and essentially increase their profits. Think of it as a person who watches what you use your electronics for every day (which is often called "Big Brother"). They can tell someone what pictures you like, videos you watch, stuff you order, who your friends are, where you've been, where you go to school, where you work, what your last text message was, what your phone call was about, what is on your computer, and so much more! In fact, Google shapes their results based on things you've searched in the past. It will omit certain sides of an issue while highlighting others. If another person searches the same idea, they may get completely different results!

2) They can manipulate your behavior and heavily influence your thoughts to the point that they can predict what you will likely do. This is typically a result from good and constance advertisement which has experts in the psychology of human behavior. Think about this question: If you bought a new phone, which brand would be your first? Now, why did you think of that brand? You might answer like "well I'm use to it, it's reliable, good specs, etc." When in reality it's been branded into your first-thought process from constant advertisement until it became your default action. Think of the next one: If you bought a soda, which would you buy? There's different brands, but habit and thoughts go hand-in-hand. You're likely to get the same round of drinks every time instead of always trying something new. Now this is natural human behavior, which is why it works so well in advertisement. It's a sort of behavioral reward process which was introduced by B. F. Skinner's "Operant Conditioning." Basically, he got an animal to do a certain behavior and rewarded it until the habit was formed. People have these habits too which are VERY hard to break because of addiction. We are addicted to many things: Social media, music, food, even things that people know is bad for them. All because of this reward process in shaping your behavior.


Pretty much everything we buy, or even get "for free" is surrounded by an advertisement of some sort. The computer software you use, the brand of tea/coffee you drink, all of these things are a daily re-enforcement of the behaviors. Even if you freely choose to pick a different product, it all falls under the same umbrella.

 

[pingtoryan]

Input is needed for the so-called "smart" things...they ain't so smart in the end...

 

[FAMAS]

We will all be destroyed by the NSA!

 

[KuroiHana]

As someone who collects fairly large amounts of data (in my case all of it is publicly available but as you might be aware a lot of people post private information in a way that's publicly accessible as well) for machine learning purposes I'm conflicted about that issue. Usually most people's data will never actually be viewed by a sentient person which means that your data will most likely only slightly change outcomes of some sort of deep learning algorithms or it will fall through more or less advanced filtering systems. With the exception of national security services most entities that use private data (like google for example) aren't concerned about individual results in any way. google for example will probably read every email sent to and from your account to be able to flag mail as spam and improve their spam filter system (which may also save google quite a bit of money by rejecting very obvious spam) but there won't be anyone at google that cares about reading that email. A more important example for google with immediate monetary impact would be the ad sense system which is able to provide personalized ads through evaluating your usage data and that of other users. That's probably also the main point that you brought up. I don't really consider ad sense like personalized advertisement providers to be inherently unethical. It's not like they are blackmailing you into buy their project or trying to scam you using social engineering techniques based on the data they got from you. It's not that different from watching sports related advertisements on sports channels if you think about it. I don't think what you bring up isn't mostly an issue of data collection but more of an issue of advertisement strategies in general. I think the vulnerability of those systems and the possibility of third parties (like certain national security services) abusing the data for political purposes, espionage, etc. is much more of an issue and that's also what I'm more concerned about than potentially being persuaded to buy a new XY brand screen. I also think that gathering data for general research is quite important and can actually be beneficial to the users the before mentioned spam filters and google translator, which if you're not aware is mostly based on statistics gathered from mined data, are good examples for this. In the end I'd say that it should be allowed to use user data but I also think that people should get educated about data collection and that google users, for example, should be made aware that their service isn't really free and that they are essentially paying with their data. I personally don't mind gathering the data and using it for statistical analysis but I expect at least some sort of protection of my data from third parties.