Should people have proprietary interests in their personal data?

[sledger]

Haha, the targeted ads are creepy as ****.

We got Tassimo machines at work, there's been a lot of chat in the office about coffee, taking coffee breaks etc.

Every ad I now get in the Guardian app is for Tassimo machines. Either my phone is listening to conversations and pushing ads based on it or it's a massive ****ing coincidence.

I already don't use the Facebook app for similar reasons. Was fed up with it pushing friend suggestions of people I sit near at work and it basically allowed me to passively stalk one of my co-workers who I was texting quite a bit by pushing literally every status update she was posting.

How many of the apps you do use have data sharing relationships with Facebook though? Not using the Facebook app probably isn't enough to stop them from gathering data about you.

 

[sledger]

Wow. I had seen Quora threads (with screenshots) where people showed that they had had WhatsApp conversations with someone about item/topic X, and then promptly threads related to X would pop up on their feed. Creepy as hell, I had thought it must be a hoax, but apparently not.

What I can't figure out is that how it is even technologically possible - when WhatsApp claims to provide end-to-end encryption on its conversations.

Keyboard activity and words typed into your phone will probably be recorded by other apps, such as Facebook, or others that have sharing relationships with Facebook. Even if the contents of your conversations are encrypted, there is nothing to stop another app on your phone from recording the fact that you used the keyboard to type the word "dog" or "television" or whatever.

 

[sledger]

From a legal perspective absolutely. There's obviously areas of grey on the collection, storage and transfer of it all but in principle I'm fine with considering an individual's data to be their personal property, regardless of who's possession it's in.

The monetisation perspective is a bit different. I think it makes sense theoretically (as an extension of the above) but in practice it would be insanely complicated to administer for a minute benefit to the individual. Data is valuable as it scales, a single person's information is worth very little. You'd either need government intervention (no thanks) or people to voluntarily sign up to a private body that has it's tendrils in the plethora of areas our data could potentially be residing in, all to deliver a few dollars a year (a completely made up figure ftr) into people's pockets. Such systems would also be vulnerable to being gamed. Just seems like too much work for too little gain.

At the same time I think the massive social media platforms make unimaginable amounts of money siphoning this stuff off, so I wouldn't be surprised to see someone else find a way to deliver a better option for both the consumer, the advertiser and (where applicable) the content creator.

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't suggesting that people should necessarily actually be literally paid for their data. My points re: economics is more to do with the fact that since personal data now have a huge economic worth, the people to whom they relate should have more of a controlling stake/influence in how they are utilised by others. It's not that they should be able to exchange data for currency (though I guess this would be fine as well), but as data are effectively becoming treated as a currency themselves, people should be afforded more rights over them.

 

[Burgey]

Very interesting topic this. First thought is yes, people should. Sledger will have a better idea as to developments in the law on this. Historically, for example, a photographer owns the rights to a photo taken by them. The law may need to move along on this a fair bit quicker than it normally does on developments in technology (ie, glacially) and how to deal with the platforms which retain and disseminate the info.

 

[sledger]

Yeah, some fairly major reforms underway in the EU and UK at the moment on this. The entire area of law governing this sort of thing is badly out of date and is about to be drastically overhauled. The problem is, the content of the overhaul itself was out of date about 5 years ago.

 

[GIMH]

Does anyone have the BT Sport app via EE?

Now and again they text me advertising televised matches, CL ones and big Prem

Yesterday I was alerted to Chester V Wrexham. Are they really sending that to everyone or is it because they know I watch non league?

Seemed relevant, sorry

 

[sledger]

Stuff like that is almost always tailored.

 

[Furball]

They need to improve their algorithms because whenever I go onto BT Player on my TV I get recommended Celtic games as catch up content I might enjoy.

 

[Furball]

How many of the apps you do use have data sharing relationships with Facebook though? Not using the Facebook app probably isn't enough to stop them from gathering data about you.

True (I can't uninstall the app, only disable it), but I would hope Facebook get less data than they would if I was using the app.

Google are ****ing annoying as well, I got a push notification from Maps today asking me about the bus stop I get the bus at when I take the wee one to school.

 

[GIMH]

They need to improve their algorithms because whenever I go onto BT Player on my TV I get recommended Celtic games as catch up content I might enjoy.

Same deal as me getting Chester V wrexham tbf

 

[Ausage]

Yeah we're not even at the point where we can accurately define what personal data is. The obvious stuff is pretty straight forward (name/address/dob etc), but notionally unidentifiable data points can be synthesised in such a way to identify people pretty easily. Browsing history is the most obvious example, but physical proportions, how you type and loads of other seemingly innocuous pieces of information can be used to identify you with a pretty high level of accuracy.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/your-anonymous-browsing-history-can-reveal-your-identity-450359
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/20...k-us-by-the-way-we-type-heres-how-to-stop-it/

How would individual right to property over a specific combination of sites accessed at specific times of the day or a specific pattern of key strokes even be possible?

 

[Gnske]

Very interesting topic this. First thought is yes, people should. Sledger will have a better idea as to developments in the law on this. Historically, for example, a photographer owns the rights to a photo taken by them. The law may need to move along on this a fair bit quicker than it normally does on developments in technology (ie, glacially) and how to deal with the platforms which retain and disseminate the info.

I wonder if James sells our info to Chinese companies.

 

[Daemon]

Many of us have this perception that things on the internet should be free.

When you think about it, Google Search (or other good search engines), maps, images, email, wikipedia, youtube, cricinfo etc are amazing and brilliant services that should really be charging people money.

These ads are the price we pay, and I find it hard to complain if they take a bit of my data to show me a targeted ad. I mean they were going to show me an ad regardless, so why not something relevant?

 

[straw man]

Many of us have this perception that things on the internet should be free.

When you think about it, Google Search (or other good search engines), maps, images, email, wikipedia, youtube, cricinfo etc are amazing and brilliant services that should really be charging people money.

Agree with this - people sign up to services such as Facebook at no monetary cost, in exchange for massive amounts of their own data, which is worth money to the service provider. As with most things privacy and risk related, it's only some time later that some might have reason to regret providing certain data.

These ads are the price we pay, and I find it hard to complain if they take a bit of my data to show me a targeted ad. I mean they were going to show me an ad regardless, so why not something relevant?

Partly agree, though the extent to which you can be profiled, tracked and targeted has grown by an order of magnitude - it's a grey area but it does make me a little uneasy e.g. that Google Maps tracks all your movements.

 

[StephenZA]

Many of us have this perception that things on the internet should be free.

When you think about it, Google Search (or other good search engines), maps, images, email, wikipedia, youtube, cricinfo etc are amazing and brilliant services that should really be charging people money.

These ads are the price we pay, and I find it hard to complain if they take a bit of my data to show me a targeted ad. I mean they were going to show me an ad regardless, so why not something relevant?

While I don't disagree with your sentiment, the problem is the pervasiveness of these big sites. Particularly FB and big brother (google).

When I go down to the pub and order a beer, the waitress does not ask me to sign a form and take note of which beer I ordered. There is things I do everyday some of which would not bother me if people knew about, other things which I consider personal/private and should only be known by a few people.

Looking at the internet, we have gone onto these platforms quite innocently and started socializing and using forums and media to interact, in an almost very similar manner to what we do in everyday life. We use it for information, studies etc. But we have probably been a bit more relaxed because we are sitting in our home, which in our minds implicitly means what we do is private, or so subconsciously we may think. Now, without much knowledge of how much information we give away everyday, we have companies literally taking note of everything. I`m not saying that they will use this information nefariously but they have the information, and we have no control over it, it exists, by the time we ever find out how it is being used it is too late.

So what happens if your boss, future employee, police, media, ex-girlfriend/wife decides that by buying/obtaining this information they can extort, embarrass just make somebodies elses life ****... where if you controlled this information, or FB/google had to ask permission in a more robust manner (not the silly terms and conditions that nobody reads!) to sell, provide etc then I would feel more comfortable. Ultimately it is purely about lack of knowledge on how much info they have, who has access to it and what rights does everybody have to control it? If all they are using it for is to target the 'Thor' trailer at me rather than the latest teen romance, no probs. Start targeting local psychologists because I am having issues with depression and used an online support group, not gonna like that.


Some interesting stuff:
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-manipulative-experiment/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners-wi-fi-security-herod-clause
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...rwegians-tried-it-out/?utm_term=.84d49ab379c8

 

[harsh.ag]

Think all these companies should begin providing an option for a monthly/annual fees which you can pay and have none of your personal data used for anything. People who don't take this option end up implicitly pricing their privacy. Ideally they should vary the fees depending on your income (which could be approximated by a variety of ways). This lets them make money off the less well-off as well who wouldn't be giving them a lot of revenues anyway.

 

[vcs]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-revenge-porn-nude-photos

Yeah, okay..

 

[vcs]

BTW, I just discovered a couple of days back that on the iPhone Health app, you can record your Sexual Activity(protected/unprotected), Cervical Mucus Quality, etc.

How thoughtful of the good folks at Apple..

 

[StephenZA]

Ironically enough, one of the biggest benefits to all this personal data running around is the health studies that are now able to be done on large numbers of people...

 

[Ausage]

BTW, I just discovered a couple of days back that on the iPhone Health app, you can record your Sexual Activity(protected/unprotected), Cervical Mucus Quality, etc.

How thoughtful of the good folks at Apple..

Pretty useful if you're attempting to have children.