Accordingly to the dictionary Privacy is: “the quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others”. In addition online is being “under the control of a central computer, as in a manufacturing process or an experiment”. So we can deduct that Online Privacy is the condition of being secluded form the presence or view of others through the control of a central computer.
Major concerns nowadays are related with Internet, privacy issue and how the companies are stolen information from our computers with the simple excuse that they need to know, at low cost, our consumer preferences. In the past are the traditional focus groups and the products surveys to discover what we want.
US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has issued some recommendation to regulate and prevent that some sensitive consumer information could be used by companies to discover what we want. Also, the customer will have some power to determine what information would share. However, how this is going to function it is still unclear.
A good example is how the European Union is managing this issue. A few months ago Google had some privacy issues related to some steal information through Wi–Fi networks. For the Europeans personal privacy is a basic human right and they are basing their protection laws in that. Maybe the US can take some advices from then to protect their own consumers.
The F.T.C. has issued some recommendations for companies to improve consumer’s privacy protection rights. I agree that it is very unclear on how exactly this will function. For example, the report includes reasonable provisions but by using the term “reasonable,” it makes it very vague and ambiguous. It will be very unclear as to what exactly would define both consumer and company rights and what would be considered legal or illegal. As a consumer, I would be better off with more privacy protection but this need to be weighed against the cost of higher prices of online services that were once sponsored by advertisers. Check out my blog for more information on these F.T.C. recommendations.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you in regards to the concerns that unregulated data collection can create , but at the same time, (as I stated on my blog Tracing Marketing) data collection on the web is a necessary and important element for companies to improve and make their products more efficient and relatable to consumers. The fact that the FTC hadn't addressed this issue until now is hard to imagine, since such lack of regulation gives room for questionable behavior. This is only one of many steps that need to happen in order to ensure a healthy and proper use of these tools among companies.
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