Privacy concern has become an everyday discussion in Tech world these days. It can be about the government spying on its people or the companies stealing the data for selling or to use it for their benefits. Technology integration with our lives is increasing as we are becoming more comfortable with it and hence more data is available for the tech owners. Equifax data breach, Facebook data breach, and many other such incidences have already shaken the world and made the user more privacy sensitive. Recently, Amazon was found to be keeping the Alexa data even if the user has deleted it from their personal device.
But what exactly is privacy? One can define privacy in the tech world as “Restricted access/ Limited control”. In this kind of privacy, some people are allowed access while some are not. Most of the people today are on social media. Whenever people sign-up on such a platform, they have to share some minimum amount of information. Some social media platforms use this data to come up with push suggestions such as friends and family suggestions, products and market suggestions, etc.
There are many groups of people who are paying other companies to get hands on your data. Some want to know your contact information to connect with you for selling some product while some are using your choice and preferences to send you product suggestions. While some are straight away trying to scam you by getting hands-on bank information or credit card information etc. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said that “Internet is the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen”.
With technologies like IoT, the number of connected devices is increasing day by day and hence the amount of data that these companies have is also increasing. And obviously, one cannot straight away opt-out; he has to stay with the technology. This creates an immense need to control data privacy. Every government needs to work on the privacy laws and come up with new regulations which can truly secure the users.