The Data Analytics that Invade Your Privacy
Do you know how much personal data your devices serve up digital giants?
Data analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It can produce incredible insights and improve many technologies, but when these insights are exploited for profit or maliciously weaponized, the impacts can range from annoying to devastating.
When many of us see news stories about the abuse of personal data, we shrug them off. We continue to ignore best practices for internet security and privacy and thereby imperil ourselves. We’re not just talking about a harmless friend-list or restaurants you’ve visited. We’re talking about data that’s far more sensitive. Behind all the smoke and mirrors or corporate propaganda, your personal information is being traded, sold, and illegally shared.
Take Facebook, for example. If you recall, Facebook was a part of an enormous data privacy scandal that should have rocked users to their core. Yet, people continue to utilize such platforms in an oblivious and almost irresponsible manner when it comes to the protection of their personal, sensitive data.
Social media isn’t the only medium where organizations use data analytics to collect and sort your personal information and preferences. For instance, exercise monitors and dieting applications may seem harmless, yet corporations are utilizing these sources to harvest precise data, like when you work out, how many protein bars you’ve consumed this last week, and much more. Similarly, medical apps and visits to medical sites can and are monitored for useful data. Also, regardless of how you feel about reproductive rights, you should know that lists of people visiting Planned Parenthood are being purchased from data hoarders by aggressive anti-abortion activists. Finally, police and other organizations have purchased lists of people who use Muslim prayer apps. These are warning signs of a surveillance state, where nobody has any privacy.
Data gathering and data analytics are such important issues that the CEOs of some of the largest tech companies came under fire during the House Judiciary Committee hearings on Antitrust Law in 2020.
Big Data, Actionable Profiles, and Lots of Money
Why do they harvest buckets of your data points for profit? With your personal data, they build a profile for you, a map of what you do, where you go, who you engage with, and what you consume. Separately, these pieces of information can seem trivial to you; assembled into a profile, they become part of a powerful tool. People and organizations sell this information to big corporations which, in turn, herd you and others with similar lifestyles into herd-like groups. They then apply marketing pressure that explicitly targets your demographic makeup, interests, and sometimes vices. In doing so, these companies are essentially making money off your free, private information—money that you don’t see a dime of!
That’s why we created the Presence Global app for iPhones and Android phones, to give control of YOUR information back to you. (Seeing the stolen data in its raw form, you may not be able to understand what data is being shared because of the unusual formats of harvested data, so we normalize decode for you.) For an iPhone, you can download from Apple Corporation’s App Store and for an Android phone from the Google Play Store.
Download Presence today and start seeing the benefits!
Join the movement #privacyfirst
