Internet Privacy: A necessity, not a luxury
Knowledge is power, and even more so when it comes to knowledge and data about consumers, no matter what it is they consume. From the very beginning, tech giants, like Google and Amazon, understood this and built their business model accordingly. However, in recent years something has changed and that change has intensified over the past year. This year, in which governments around the world declared a state of emergency due to the increase in cyber attacks, following the outbreak of COVID-19, was also the year in which awareness to the importance of data protection spiked with the general public, regulators, governments and even the business sector. Consumer data is power, and protecting consumers’ personal information provides businesses with even greater power, and also with a very high level of credibility.
Only recently, WhatsApp announced they would begin sharing information about user behavior on the app, with its parent company, Facebook. The controversy and public debate around this announcement highlights growing fears about data privacy. Many users abandoned WhatsApp after the messenger service changed its privacy policy. Worries that their data could end up with Facebook are driving them to competitors pushing superior data protection. Businesses need then to understand the power and insights that the new generation of consumers has acquired. Companies, and in particular tech and social network giants, need to understand the power and balance demanded by the new generation, between sharing information and protecting their privacy. While this is a formula that is redefined at every moment by us, the users, it can no longer be trampled or ignored. As recently exemplified with the immediate protest of millions of users that led to WhatsApp postponing the deadline for approving the new terms of use.
Users complete waiver of their own personal data, and the perception that the user is only a product – these are no longer the reality. Today, businesses have begun to comprehend that their relationship with customers cannot be neatly summed up as another ‘mailing address’. A mutual relationship is involved, which requires a new approach to the personal data that they possess about their customers. We are in the midst of an era in which the principled discourse is about control over consumers’ digital identity, the scale of the information that businesses hold, its storage and its use. This era created a need for new technological solutions and business models, aimed at data protection while providing added business value and maintaining growth.
The fact is that our data still circulates around the web and its use by companies, both large and small, is enormous.
