This article deals with the trade off between privacy and personalization that many consumers don't know they are involved in. While we indulge in the great benefits of personalization on the web such as product recommendations, online search aggregations, and personalized tutoring systems, we do not realize the implications these features have on our privacy. How much a citizen/consumer is willing to share online is connected to their personality, cultural based attitudes, the type of information disclosed, and the value that is assigned to personalization benefits. These factors all combine to create categories for how much information citizens divulge. In my personal inexperience, I am privacy pragmatic, I absolutely love any personalization feature that can save me time, money, or anything that could ultimately make my web browsing experience more enjoyable. On the other hand my father is a privacy fundamentalist- he hates sharing any personal information due to his upbringing in soviet Poland where all information was owned by the government. While I love having my information more personalized, I do believe that I may over valuate small but immediate benefits of divulging personal information and undervalue any future negative impacts; This way of thinking is called Acquisti and it is something that many people other than myself may deal with. With the recent allegations made by Edward Snowden pertaining to how the United States uses our data, it is imperative that we take a harder look at our decision to trade off privacy for personalization. This leads to the question, when does personalization ultimately overstep its bounds? At what point will I feel violated? This answer is different for many people, but shouldn’t companies constantly be working to make sure that their guidelines fit with the consumers needs? In the article 93% of people said they should have a legal right to know everything a website knows about them, BUT we never read the terms and conditions. In fact- a mere presence of privacy statements provide more trust, even if the level of privacy was very low. Consumers and businesses should work together to make terms, conditions, and privacy statements more customizable to our personal needs. I should be able to select what I am comfortable with the company having and what I am not. At the same time, none of the information the company has on me should be used for any other purpose besides personalization.
Throughout reading this article I was bombarded with an ethical question that happened recently in the news: A man claimed that he accidentally left his baby boy in a hot car- and the baby died. Later news revealed that he had actually googled how long and what temperature he could leave a baby in a car for it to become fatal. Should this information be used in court? Is it okay to breach a citizen’s privacy for the overall safety of the community?
Judith,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you opened up the article into personal experience. I too am a sucker for those little dashes of personality most apps allow that make them truly your own. Your father's experience is quite interesting as well as maybe in the future our own government could transition into a 1984, Orwellian dystopia if we don't establish bounds. In regard to your question, we've got a dilemma. On the one hand, that man was pure evil and deserved any and all punishment headed his way. On the other hand, on who's authority should it be decided what and what not the government is allowed to access in our digital realms, ones in which privacy statements give us a false notion of protection until the government comes knocking. I think this debate will continually arise and needs to be addressed.