Privacy is a major trust barrier that we consider the most alarming when it comes to personal information. All that sensitive information that we give out is very valuable to us and we would keep it to ourselves at best. Your date of birth, where you live, your bank information, all are very important! Obviously, we are very protective with our privacy, but to what extent are we really protective about?
Businesses are trying to zone in legal, ethical ways to obtain personal information that would be beneficial to us. Weird right? Their purpose is to interest our likings towards what information they obtain. There have been big incidents that businesses obtaining sensitive information, for example is Google and their smart home device. Google has been able to profit themselves by their own search engine, you have probably seen an advertisement whilst browsing around the world wide web and wouldn’t even know that Google is actual learning from your common searches which uses ‘cookies’. Recently, Google has announced an option of cookie-blocking, which will allow users to block stored files on your device. There have been numerous complaints of privacy issues, therefore have been addressed under Google’s privacy, however cookies have benefits that make your online experience easier when saving browsing data.
As for Google’s smart home device, Google Home has been making waves with other competing devices. Their smart device has its pros, considering that it has voice assistance and enable other factors that can betterment your daily tasks. But how serious are we when you open your home towards a device, especially a device that responds and learns from you. Is it really smart or really picking out information from you personally? It’s very ‘creepy’ to feel that a device that is voice command by using the words “Okay Google” and seamlessly speculate a device to know you and gain information from you. It’s uncertain to what extent that we trust ourselves with smart devices, not just Google’s smart speaker but other smart speakers as well. In a report, 75 percent don’t trust their data shared from obtaining information, this being true however due to the matter, it hasn’t stop people to buy smart home devices which really has questioned the integrity of privacy.
We value privacy as one being very important and other sections in our lives such as information, however people don’t even mind the fact that artificial intelligence technology is learning and storing information for them. So, do we really care about privacy? Yes, if our tasks are made less hard and more efficient however using stored information and using them to sell unethically, then evidently, we have a problem in our society in terms of sensitive information being misused.
Let me know about your thoughts in the comments below. Do you think companies justify an ethical standpoint towards privacy and their use of private information to benefit you as a consumer?
Joseph's Blog 
Hey Joseph, great job on your post! Privacy concern is the main factor that influenced consumer’s purchasing, it is scary imagining that IoT could collect out personal data and learn from our behaviour which feels like someone is monitoring you, isn’t it? I think it benefits the consumers when the companies justify an ethical standpoint towards privacy and their use of information as they could be less worried about their privacy and personal information being hacked or leaked out.
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Hey Junni! Definitely privacy is a concern that people should be worried about. It’s already bad enough for hackers being able to access to most technology in the world. Technology has envloped these hackers to have access with our personal data. Now reading and learning that companies are taking advantage of our personal data is a little far fetch but if they manage to use our data ethically, I might be able to feel at ease if companies use our data to outweigh our concerns as consumers.
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Interesting read Joseph! The issue of privacy on the World Wide Web is a constantly spoken about topic due to websites potentially exploiting our data. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the scandal where Facebook sold our data to external businesses for money, that was quite a controversial time for Facebook and for us, as our private data was unknowingly released to strangers. However, I believe that businesses collect our data online only for our own benefit and to enhance our user experience, they are only collecting data to make the experience better for us, and I don’t think they would purposely use it against us!
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Hey Matthew! I sure have heard of Facebook’s issue regarding about personal data sold to external businesses. I only heard of the scandal from Facebook itself. So I guess for me to feel how awkward to feel my privacy has been breached and yet to find this issue alarming from issue makers themselves. But I guess people need to read the terms and conditions, because I would assume that Facebook would have stated may be using our data before accepting the terms and conditions. It makes sense that our engagement with apps like Facebook would try and benefit us because as consumers, we are wanting more even though we’re not asking for it! Anyways thanks for commenitng Matthew!
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Interesting post here Joseph! I think companies may use your information within that internal business only in order to improve on their services and help customers. When it comes to selling customer information to other third parties is where its stepping over the line. This is unethical! They do not have the right to spread our information like that, it violates our privacy online!
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Hey Andy? I definitely understand how frustrating it can be to see companies use personal information and sell them. Personally, I’m somewhat in between what companies do in terms of using our personal information, however, it benefits by a significant amount, I can see is companies justifying what unethical problems. But it’s still wrong to have our personal information used positively or negatively, it’s still in breach. Anyways, thanks for your insight!
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