This week you watched The curly fry conundrum: Why social media \"likes\" say mo

Question

This week you watched The curly fry conundrum: Why social media "likes" say more than you think by Jennifer Golbeck.

Discussion:

The goal of Golbeck's Ted Talk presentation is to make people aware that (a) data is being collected about you, (b) companies are profiting from this data, (c) you don't have a lot of power to prevent your data from being collected, and (d) you SHOULD have control over how your data is being used and who is using it. She also brainstorms ways users could regain control of their data through the legal system or by having companies modify their data collection policies.

Golbeck's discussion of Target is very relevant. Target is renowned in the industry for its data collection practices. Target maintains a customer relationship management database which includes information from in-store purchases (they link all of your purchases to a unique identifier) and data they collect externally (e.g. data from Facebook and other sources). Combine the two data streams and Target can predict, with very good certainly, what your gender is, where you live, how far you travel to work, your relationship status, and they can even tell if you are pregnant and if so when you are due. The amount of money spent each year on pregnancy-related purchases is tremendous. In efforts to win the market share in this profit area, Target has hired a team of statisticians to perform predictive analysis. The goal, in this particular situation, is to predict which women are expecting (or soon to be), without asking them directly, by analyzing their purchasing behavior (e.g. cribs, baby clothes, prenatal vitamins, etc). This way Target can "target" this particular demographic (with coupons, discounts, and other offers) early in the process, thus getting a jump on the competition. Golbeck mentioned an example where a father stormed down to Target to complain about his young daughter receiving pregnancy-related coupons in the mail only later to find out his daughter was pregnant.

Question:

What are your thoughts about companies collecting data about you? Do you feel this type of data collection is beneficial or detrimental? Why? Do you feel you have a right to know what data companies are collecting about you? Does this concern you as a consumer?

Explanation / Answer

Q1) What are your thoughts about companies collecting data about you? Do you feel this type of data collection is beneficial or detrimental? Why? Do you feel you have a right to know what data companies are collecting about you? Does this concern you as a consumer?

I do believe there can be something beneficial to companies collecting data, but for most partit is detrimental. The reason I believe that data collecting can be beneficial is because some companies use these data to better assist you, for example a clothing site might collect data such as your location to find out if you are nearby that store. However, for the most part I think companies collecting data is detrimental as it mostly serves to benefit the company not the consumer. I do believe we do have a right to know what data companies are collecting about us, because it is there is some data that is confidentialand should not be collected or shared. This does concern me as a consumer because I am kept out of the view as to what type of my data ther are collecting behind my back (private, public, professional, medical, financial, etc) and what if they try to sell these to other competitors for their personal gain thus causing harm to me. Also, I am not aware completely what impacts these may cause and at what point in time. Someone can hack my bank account, if my bank related data or credentails gets stolen. Also, as a consumer, I am very concerned about the ethical rights that they mention in their eCommerce website and how much of it is being actually implemented in practice.

Please let me know in case of any clarifications required. Thanks!

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