17
ISSUES: Privacy
Chapter 1: What is privacy?
How to delete yourself (and your searches)
fromGoogle’s memory
By Thomas Tamblyn
Data surveillance is all around us, and it’s
going to change our behaviour
An article from
The Conversation
.
By Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney
E
nabled
by
exponential
technological advancements
in data storage, transmission
and analysis, the drive to “datify” our
lives is creating an ultra-transparent
world where we are never free from
being under surveillance.
Increasing aspects of our lives are
now recorded as digital data that are
systematically stored, aggregated,
analysed and sold. Despite the
promise of big data to improve
our lives, all encompassing data
surveillance constitutes a new form
of power that poses a risk not only to
our privacy, but to our free will.
Data surveillance started out with
online behaviour tracking designed
to help marketers customise their
messages and offerings. Driven
by companies aiming to provide
personalised product, service and
content
recommendations,
data
were utilised to generate value for
customers.
But data surveillance has become
increasingly invasive and its scope has
broadened with the proliferation of
the internet-of-things and embedded
computing. The former expands
surveillance to our homes, cars and
daily activities by harvesting data
from smart and mobile devices. The
latter extends surveillance and places
it inside our bodies where biometric
data can be collected.
Two characteristics of data surveillance
enable its expansion.
It’s multifaceted
Data are used to track and
circumscribe
people’s
behaviour
across space and time dimensions.
An example of space-based tracking
is geo-marketing. With access to real-
time physical location data, marketers
can send tailored ads to consumers’
mobile devices to prompt them to visit
stores in their vicinity. To maximise
their effectiveness, marketers can
tailor the content and timing of ads
based on consumers’ past and current
location
behaviours,
sometimes
without consumers’ consent.
Location data from GPS or street
maps can only approximate a person’s
location. But with recent technology,
marketers can accurately determine
whether a consumer has been inside
a store or merely passed by it. This
way they can check whether serving
ads has resulted in a store visit, and
refine subsequent ads.
Health
applications
track
and
structure people’s time. They allow
users to plan daily activities, schedule
workouts, and monitor their progress.
Some applications enable users to
plan their caloric intake over time.
Other applications let users track
their sleep pattern.
While users can set their initial
health goals, many applications
rely on the initial information to
structure a progress plan that
includes recommended rest times,
workout load, caloric intake and
sleep. Applications can send users
notifications to ensure compliance
with the plan: a reminder that a
workout is overdue; a warning that a
caloric limit is reached; or a positive
reinforcement when a goal has been
reached. Despite the sensitive nature
Y
our Google account is a powerful tool. Through
tracking and artificial intelligence it helps shapes
Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube into the service
that you see today.
There is however a downside to all of this, and that is that
to do all that Google tracks pretty much every action you
take within its services.
So if you play a YouTube video, search for an image
or translate a piece of text Google keeps a record of
everything.
If this, rather understandably, fills you with dread then
don’t panic. The company has released a website called
My Activity which shows in detail your activity through
Google’s many services.
That includes every search you’ve ever made, every
YouTube video you’ve ever watched and more.
Now if that worries you then don’t panic because My
Activity was created to give you control over all of this.
You can now login, review and delete these activities
individually giving you far more control over your online
activity and Google’s tracking of it.
8 July 2016
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The above information is reprinted with kind
permission from The Huffington Post UK. Please visit
for further information.
© 2017 AOL (UK) Limited
