Information Gathering

Josh Mills

2015-07-23 12:00:00

Show of hands, how many of you are familiar with and use products by Google?

How about Facebook?

And Microsoft(Bing)? Okay, you can put your hands down.. I know none of you ACTUALLY use Bing..

Information

What you might not be aware of is the vast amounts of information that these and other similar companies collect about you

Yes, you

Whether you feel that you are important enough to be observed or not, your information is gathered daily, in many ways that you might not even imagine.

Through ways you might not even believe possible

As cool as all of this is.. what does it mean to you, the user, the customer, the benefactor(receiver)?

Believe it or not, all of the previous technologies are owned singularly by Google

What then are the implications, what does it mean..

To YOU

To you.. the customer

Google was founded with the motto to not be evil. This means that although they are a private company and resource, they set off with the intention of treating and providing their services as a public utility

While Google may treat their services like a public utility, the issue is that their service is not in fact their "product." What then is their product?

You

You are the product for companies such as Google

Companies like Google provide their services for free, in order to gather information about their users

You

Such as you

Advertising

This information is extremely valuable to advertisers who are more than willing to pay these companies for it

These advertising companies then use this information to create targeted advertising which is much more effective on their end

So now that we have explored why companies like Google are interested in gathering your information.. Why should..

We the user care?

We the user care?

If you personally have no privacy concerns witht the actions being taken by these companies, then why is this a concern?

NSA

The concern should come with the parties who have access to this information

Both the governent and its agencies have direct access to this information that is collected by private companies.

SCA Act

The government can gain access through a warrant, but most of the time they don't even need a court ordered document thanks to out-of-date laws that are in place such as the SCA act

The government agencies such as the NSA then use this information for surveillance and other possibly unethical actions..

This collected information that is just sitting inside a database is also susceptible to being hacked

There have been many databases hacked recently and it seems that the trend is only growing

At the end of the day..

At the end of the day.. it is important to realize that

You, the user

you, the user, are not in fact the customer for these service providing companies

Privacy

and although their services may be free, you end up paying for them with your privacy and private information

Conclusion

Don't be
Evil

This is a relatively new dilemma and one that we must address in order to find an ethical line for the actions of these companies and more importantly, enforce this ethical line so that these companies cannot take advatage of their ignorant and unknowing user base.