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Everything is negotiable. You need only ask.
As information security risk to businesses increases, the risk is passed directly to the consumer. If you go in on an agreement with a technology service where you absorb more personal risk than [you did] 3 years ago, you should have some leverage in deal making.Read more
The Internet is a creative, user-endorsed environment supporting information exchanges for every purpose known to man. So what is it about Internet use that could be so self-defeating when it comes to consumer privacy?
There are a few best-laid deceptions in the marketplace keeping the Internet hostile to personal privacy.
“The Internet is free."
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how the Internet can be a multi-billion dollar business and be free to use by so many? The truth is that the Internet is not ‘free’. Nothing in life is free. There are costs.
How the Internet pays for free-to-you services, starts with online beacons; which track, trace and evaluate your traffic and identity. This is usually your home or work IP address via your Internet Service Provider. After awhile you leave a distinct ‘footprint’ online. Then many marketing algorithms compare among each other. This all takes place hundreds or thousands of miles away from most online consumers at server farms and data brokerage firms. The data firms keep tabs on any information you volunteer to the “free” service: age, sexual preferences, when you have free time, if you’re working at work or unemployed, what kind of car you drive, so forth and so on.
Then the firms sell it to whomever is buying. That is how the Internet pays each other millions to stay in business while you use a “free” account. You are the product they are selling.
“My personal information is protected by US law.”
Test this unfortunate half-truth. If the government can hack you and never suffer consequence or a corporation can help themselves to your contacts, with no consequences over a period of years, are you being protected by the law?
There are a wide variety of laws, but no holistic federal law to protect all consumer data and personal information. Protected areas of consumer privacy are scattered through a variety of policy areas: health, employment, driver protections, data breach notification. Protections also vary from State-to-State in the US, but again, no holistic area of coverage. There’s just a sense of policy running scared from your serial outrage in the Capitols of our country.
Some countries and continents have a national consumer data protection policy or law. In the US, it varies from agency to agency. So privacy protection according to US nation State and member States remains as spotty as a Jackson Pollack painting.
The best fix for this problem is a fearless examination of State & Federal privacy laws to cover the areas you are most concerned about. You can do a casual search online or visit your local law library. The more informed you are, the better decisions you will make when it comes to who you trust with your information.
“I am owed whatever I can get from the Internet.”
Nothing sets you up for failed privacy results more than presuming that someone else’s server farm, computing code and the staff hired to market and manage your transactional information are beholden to you. If the Internet architects can fool you into believing the space you rented on the currency of your data is actually yours, you are deceived.
This illusion is typically dispelled by being booted off or banned by an online moderator. Some have attempted campaigns to collect on online company space because they are avid users. They are likely presented with a document created by a very well paid army of lawyers telling them how the information they fed into their system actually belongs to the company because of an End License User Agreement. That would be the biggest deception of all.
The only thing you own in the cloud is your information and your data. That never changes. If you want to change the balance of user power, you have to stop feeding the beast the data it needs to thrive.
“I erased my data.”
There’s a saying in the privacy field that ‘data never dies’. It is somewhat true. Forensics teams use the same tactics corporate data recovery pros use, say, after a storm surge knocks out computer networks. That’s great news if involuntary data loss would ruin your business or create financial havoc. However, if you wanted to scrub personal information from the online universe you will need to visit a different kind of reputation specialist, like Privacy Duck.
These service specialists address unique data brokerage and reputation conferencing strata called, People Finders, who license personally identifiable information. People Finders sell your address, location, work, age and contact information to anyone for any price. An even less legitimate version of this takes place on the dark web to online criminals.
THE BOTTOM LINE
If you want to better protect your personal information, adopt a consumer privacy regimen for your household. You are always the best gate-keeper of what goes in and what comes out of every information portal of your life. Digital privacy is a new consumer discipline. However, it is having increasingly great & powerful results coaching the market to regard your privacy.
You can be the next person in line to demand anonymized data ecosystems like PDDP, HTTPS, increasingly secured communication, encryption, and ad blockers. If you already use services like Ghostery, Mozilla private browsing services and anonymizing search engines like, Duck Duck Go, you are on the path to reorganizing an online currency system.
Online businesses continue to put your privacy on the sacrifice altar when they don't have to. Your part of the business end of your agreement needs to require privacy by design, warrants for your data, and to anonymize data they use in marketing exchanges.
Demand better protections. They are technically within reach.
What is vegan leather? 'Vegan leather' is a term of pretence representing a leather-like product made from vegan materials. The label presumes no animals were harmed in the making of the product. In some stores, you can purchase 'vegan leather' as a dead animal hide dyed in all natural vegetable dyes made from plants. The leather is not vegan, but the plant dyes are 100% vegan.
Real vegans typically won't buy 'vegan leather'. They'll buy belts and shoes made from felt, rubber, canvas and vinyl. Fake leather products are not usually labelled 'vegan leather'. They have labels or tags detailing the nylon or other synthetic materials. However, you'll never know what kind of 'vegan leather' you might be dealing with unless you investigate further.
'Vegan leather' can be a misleading marketing term for the ignorant and/or superficial crowds who will buy things to appear more 'conscious', rather than actually being more conscious. What would motivate someone to buy a product to openly exhibit their misappropriate ethics? Whomever they are, they feel compelled to camouflage themselves among those with high ethical standards. This is so they can witness something they'll never be committed to doing unless the standard hits critical mass. If someone is buying vegan leather, the ethical numbers have these actors & actresses on the defense.
So how are privacy apologetics like vegan leather?
Before I say anything, I respect the efforts of all privacy proponents when they actually are being proactive, regarding data ownership and using ethical privacy UX development practices.
However, there's a wide berth between professional practice of "user privacy principles" and realtime market practice of privacy. That's why you see all the news drama and color between the license and spreadsheet firesales of PII and an employee-caused-breach leading to civil liability. The truth is somewhere between Privacy by Design and Hasn't-gotten-caught-by-the-FTC.
For instance, it may feel counterintuitive to ask an institution like the NSA to adopt basic privacy principles, but it isn't. If the NSA, or any other mass surveillance aperture, is collecting PII and diverse sensitive personal information, they are responsible for protecting that information. Every other business and institution on the planet has to regard personal data rights or face civil liability. They must comply with the laws that protect data owners just like the Big Data 4: Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Palantir.
"BEWARE THE API"
The Big Data 4 are also the face of corporate, or privatized, mass surveillance (SEE: PRISM & Snowden Leaks). They still hunt and gather for global intelligence authorities depending on the purchase (or legal) order from mass surveillance authorities on any given day of the week.
Do they regard privacy? The answer is, more soberly, "When their lawyers say so." They face federal regulatory conventions that place fetters on their ability to completely disregard user privacy. The difference between them and a hacker who breaks into steal your information is a 15 pg Terms of Service agreement. This rationalizes your consent to trade use of your datasets in exchange for an account or use oftheir "free" service.
It has turned out to be more of a faustian bargain with the devil.
So when Facebook and Palantir, both data intelligence gatherers & InQtel startups who own large parcels of Palo Alto Real Estate, put on a Privacy Conference in Sweden it does not seem like authentic privacy standardization at work. By another label, I would call it the privatized Hearts-&-Minds Swedish massage package, as a complimentary consolation prize for sunken US Safe Harbor conventions. Safe Harbor was a years long triumph in privacy apologetics. It is being mourned by people who really don't care about authentic global privacy conventions. I would call this occurrance a case study in gross privacy apologetics, rather than professional privacy pragmatism.
I did think, "Oh this is just 'vegan leather' for Euros who 'lost' something in Safe Harbor."
I can assure you Palantir's rendition of 'vegan leather' won't hold a candle to Privacy By Design. Not even close.
