Source: medium.facilelogin.com
📣 "protect individuals not companies“
With the tough new General Data Protection Regulations coming into force on 25 May, companies around the world are being forced to notify their users to accept new privacy policies and data processing terms to continue to use the services.
But Giovanni Buttarelli, the European data protection supervisor (EDPS), lambasted the often-hostile approach of the recent deluge of notifications.
“If this encounter seems a take-it-or-leave it proposition – with perhaps a hint of menace – then it is a travesty of at least the spirit of the new regulation, which aims to restore a sense of trust and control over what happens to our online lives,”
“Consent cannot be freely given if the provision of a service is made conditional on processing personal data not necessary for the performance of a contract.”
“The most recent [Facebook] scandal has served to expose a broken and unbalanced ecosystem reliant on unscrupulous personal data collection and micro-targeting for whatever purposes promise to generate clicks and revenues.”
“The digital information ecosystem farms people for their attention, ideas and data in exchange for so called ‘free’ services. Unlike their analogue equivalents, these sweatshops of the connected world extract more than one’s labour, and while clocking into the online factory is effortless it is often impossible to clock off.”
Read Giovanni Buttarelli’ post, 'Accept and continue': billions are clocking into digital sweat factories without realising it
The GDPR is, essentially, about accountability of controllers, safeguards for individuals including giving them more control over what happens to their data. Its greater goal is to protect individuals not companies.
What took Jan Koum so long when Brian Acton left 6 months earlier for the same reasons? #DeleteWhatsApp #DeleteFacebook
Not one crocodile tear since Koum was a Trump supporter!
According to the Post, Koum and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton grew tired of Facebook’s relentless march towards integrating WhatsApp user data into advertising profiles—in defiance of promises made during the acquisition process that the company would remain independent.
Where once WhatsApp generated money via cheap 99-cent subscriptions, it now feeds information like phone numbers and contacts into Facebook, generating revenue but undermining the service’s original purpose and security. Acton had already left in November, donating $50 million to competing chat service Signal and telling people to delete Facebook.
- 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information
- 66 percent trust Amazon
- 62 percent trust Google
- 60 percent trust Microsoft
- 47 percent trust Yahoo
Source: reuters.com
#privacy#data privacy#data protection#data breach#trust#social media#social networks#social networking#facebook#amazon#google#microsoft#yahoo#deleted account#delete facebook#deletefacebook#facebook data breach#facebook scandal#cambridge analytica#2016 election#robert mercer#rebekah mercer#steve bannon#alexander nix#opinion poll#public opinion
The hook, “Facebook plays to our base psychological impulses" by valuing popularity above all else.”
"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook,"
"We tried to map all the inputs, the fields in which we interact with Facebook, and the outcome," he says.
"We mapped likes, shares, search, update status, adding photos, friends, names, everything our devices are saying about us, all the permissions we are giving to Facebook via apps, such as phone status, wifi connection and the ability to record audio."
All of this research provided only a fraction of the full picture. So the team looked into Facebook's acquisitions, and scoured its myriad patent filings.
One map shows how everything - from the links we post on Facebook, to the pages we like, to our online behaviour in many other corners of cyber-space that are owned or interact with the company (Instagram, WhatsApp or sites that merely use your Facebook log-in) - could all be entering a giant algorithmic process.
And that process allows Facebook to target users with terrifying accuracy, with the ability to determine whether they like Korean food, the length of their commute to work, or their baby's age.
Source: news.ycombinator.com
International Data Privacy Day
Perhaps the truth is not so much that people don’t care about privacy, but they are being socially engineered not to care by those with a vested interest in getting their hands on the data. Just think of the lengthy T&Cs and EULAs that digital consumers have been encouraged to ignore for years. And which still routinely go unread almost every time a person downloads an app or signs up to a digital service.
Suspending privacy concerns has become the tacit ‘payment’ exacted from consumers for accessing a ‘free’ service. Which of course means the service is not actually free. But that doesn’t mean people don’t care about privacy, more that they are being encouraged to trade it — to think of privacy as a currency which buys them digital access. To engage in a transaction.
The wider problem then is that consumers are also being socially engineered not to scrutinize the exact cost of each of these transactions, given it is almost never made plain to them. (Not to mention that the ‘cost’ is not fixed — it can shift with every service update.) Consumers are encouraged not to ask whether they are getting value for money for trading away their privacy. Nor question how much data they are really handing over, and whether they are comfortable with that particular trade.
So giving up their own privacy also, ironically, requires that consumers do not to pry too deeply into the motivations of the entity asking for that data. To accept the transaction on trust.
This ‘privacy for blind access’ trade is a one way street. And, in many cases, a very bad deal.
Source: TechCrunch