The Importance Of Buying Personal And Consumer Data

In the age of cutting edge technology such as the world in which we live, easily obtainable information has turned out to be a mainstay in society. The days of instant-gratification are upon us and waiting for any length of time since the advent of the Internet has become unacceptable in the technological arena. Because information is so easily available, this gives pause to security and privacy of personal identifiable information. With headlines screaming Identity Theft the disadvantages are clear. No longer can users post whatever they are thinking, doing, wearing, etc. without the profound knowledge that each post is forever solidified forever on the World Wide Web for anyone with an Internet connection to access. Those with less technological knowledge have yet to grasp this concept and this unfortunately has caused harm to their personal lives and professional careers, in some cases.

Something similar is happening with our cyber information. Internet service providers can collect information from users such as browsing information, location, financial, health information, etc. and sell that information to marketing and advertisement agencies. Sites such as Facebook can also track user’s online activity and sell that information to advertisers and third-party sites, an example of this is anytime a user logs into a site using Facebook it allows that company to track their online activity. Ultimately, people should be made aware of what is happening with their personal

The internet is a virtual smorgasbord of personal information. If you need someone’s phone number, you can look it up. If you want to research a company, you can simply visit their website. If you want to reconnect with an old friend, you can use social media. The sheer amount of personal information that is available online makes it easy to breach the boundary between using the internet for its intended purpose and using the internet to invade another person’s privacy (Ireland, 2017).

The amount of data produced in the world is increasing exponentially, and we are a part of this phenomenon. We all use email, phones, social media, and credit cards. The new technologies that we are bringing home, such as smart cars and smart TVs, are collecting more and more data. Boyd and Crawford exposed the imperfections of the Big Data industry, and they have shown that we cannot assume that the industry will solve its own problems. By using all these technologies, we have given Big Data access to our finances, social interactions, homes, and minds. Big Data offers imperfect people tools that can be used for good and evil. If we are blind to how our data is being collected, the industry will continue misusing our data. But if we pay attention, and demand the technology companies respect our privacy, they will be forced to have higher standards. Currently, our society has ignored how our privacy is being jeopardized. As Boyd and Crawford noted, we don’t have the tools and access of researches, and our often unaware of the algorithms collecting our information (759,760). But we do have power. We can voice our concerns, or find alternatives to services that don’t respect us. We can use the tools we have access to for good, just like Big Data has been used

In the article, “Shopping for Privacy on the Internet,” James P. Nehf states that “… [Our] consumer privacy in the United States is largely the responsibility of individuals who are expected to guard their personal information and take steps to minimize the risk that it will be used in an unauthorized way” (Nehf, 351). Fortunately, there are multiple routes you can take to help protect and preserve your personal information, such as doing something as simple as changing passwords and double checking all the links we click or be cautious of websites we encounter that has strange behavior. However, technology also has a small catch: putting your private information at risk for invasion. Just when you believe our personal materials are guaranteed safety, the same content can be hacked or tapped into by a person or group of individuals with the knowledge of how to work a computer, they can use this skill for negative intentions. Knowing that technology is constantly changing, we must understand just how much our personal information is at threat. In many cases it seems as if you need to be a step ahead of the criminal.

Anyone who uses computer technology today accepts the fact that their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) may or could be transmitted, collected, and used to benefit the one who receives that information. It is our responsibility to know what PII transmissions are being made available for public use over the web. Understanding all the aspects of PII and the approaches that are to be taken to protect our privacy will make us more aware of PII. As we continue to utilize the technology available, we expose ourselves to become donors of PII. Having knowledge of what PII is and how information is being compiled to identify

It is inevitable that organizations can keep each and every clients account safe and it is up to each individual to do their due diligence to continuously be aware and informed about each account and all the activity associated with it. As technology evolves many organizations encourage individuals to place more sensitive information online through phone applications and on websites that prompt passwords to save or usernames to be associated with first or last names. The risk of these actions only become relevant when it actually occurs to a specific individual due to the encouragement portrayed when reading the precautions on the specific websites. The perceived safety ensures the reader that the sensitive information will remain safe although the past two years portrays many instances to prove the statement false. Fortune explains in an article written back in October that, “At the end of January, as many as 11 million Premera Blue Cross customers were affected by a hack. Anthem announced the following month that almost 80 million current and former customers’ personal information had been breached.” The continuous efforts made by fraudsters enables them to stay ahead of technology in ways that enable them to hack websites and obtain the sensitive information clients provide to

Recently a case were a database of personal information was implemented in connection with a services agreement. The client was responsible in verifying the service provider was allowed to use this personal information in order to provide their services. They trusted on a depiction or guarantee in a contract which was considered inadequate. “In that case, the company was in the business of sending emails to consumers. In order to promote the products and services of its advertising clients, it obtained the email addresses from list providers, which had gathered these lists through a variety of means” (Gilbert, 2017). This is a clear example of negligence on the part of a company not using proper safeguards and fair practices in transactions were personal private information is involved. Slip ups like this can lead to security threats, breaches and identity theft for the consumer. The New York Attorney General's investigation of the provenance of these marketing lists revealed that some of the company's list providers, on their own websites, had promised consumers they would NOT sell, rent, or share their information to or with third parties. On the other hand, the company represented on its website that recipients of its email campaigns "have all requested to receive information about products and

Unknown to many citizens, corporations store large quantities of data while conducting business with consumers. Deborah L. Golemon and Laurie A. Babin elaborate on this matter in their article titled “How marketers are dealing with the controversy surrounding behavioral targeting.” According to Golemon and Babin, the process of installing tracking files on consumers’ computers is becoming more of a universal practice. When looking at 1,000 popular sites in 2009, one study found that 80 percent were using this practice, which is two times the amount of the same sites in 2005. At Yahoo, the National Sales Director stated that the company bases 35 percent of the site’s advertising on behavioral targeting. In addition, the company claimed that 74 percent of advertisers who try the site’s products continue using behavioral targeting (1). Golemon and Babin’s point is that the act of tracking consumer habits online has grown in popularity. Overall, the authors are less concerned with privacy when companies track consumer data than with security. If implemented in the ideal world, these tactics would not pose a concern for security. In reality, hackers have become increasingly skilled at taking advantage of weak spots in companies’

Despite the many stated policies and programs that the world's best-known Internet sites have for protecting consumer information, it is in reality often sold to marketers or used as the basis for creating marketing services on their own (Dinev, Hart, 2006). Why this is such a threat to the legal foundations of the Internet is that it sets a very real threat of websites being able to collect and sell personal information and get away with

In today’s world, people tend to run the majority of their daily errands through the internet. It is very easy, convenient, and it saves a lot of time. In one hour someone can make a deposit into his personal bank account, order a medical prescription, pay bills, apply for a loan, get some shopping, and more. All it takes for a customer to be able to do this is having an account with each of these company’s websites. Creating an account is usually a very simple process where the person provides some information and creates a username and a password to be in a position to return to the website. This information provided by the client is called: digital data or digital information, which is simply any kind of information in digital format. Digital data can be public or private, it can be kept by the government, banks, medical providers, and other institutions; as well as a freely available on the internet on websites like myspace.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. But is our data really safe? Along with its many benefits, the march of technology makes an encompassing surveillance network seem almost inevitable. We owe much of the privacy we have enjoyed in the past to a combination of immature technology and insufficient manpower to monitor us. But these protective inefficiencies are giving way to efficiency technologies of data processing and digital surveillance that threaten to eliminate our privacy. Already we are tracked by our

This is an era of massive violations of privacy rights and individual liberties due to the new technologies of surveillance, data mining, electronic monitoring, biometric chips, spamming, hacking, phishing, and security breaches at major private and public institutions. These new technologies make the protection of privacy rights far more difficult than in the pre-electronic past. Given the nature of the Internet, thousands or even millions of people can view these Twitter and Facebook postings in a very short time, and they can quickly go 'viral' and spread globally almost overnight (Owyang and Milliken 2010). Governments collect data on the entire life cycles of individuals, from birth to death, as well as information on marriages, divorces, legal records, financial histories, voting, motor vehicles and property ownership. Those suspected of terrorist or 'subversive' sympathies are subjected to far more intensive covert monitoring and investigation by the federal government, under the provisions of the Patriot Act. Banks, corporations and private organizations in general also collect an immense amount of personal and financial data for credit and marketing purposes. In short, these governmental and private organizations now have considerable power over "individual autonomy and decision making" thanks to these new technologies (Solove, 2006, p. 2).

As we have progressed throughout the chapters in this course we have learned more and more about consumer economics. The knowledge it takes to keep consumers safe and up to date is constantly changing to allow consumers to protect themselves from potential problems that they are aware of as well as things that are concealed. During the last few chapters of this course one topic that really stuck out was identity theft. It is very fascinating that people are capable of stealing so much information people they don’t even know. This information that hackers and other intelligent people collect can change the average consumer’s life as well as company’s reliability. During this essay, the topic of identity theft will be covered as a consumer is affected as well as how cybercrimes using the same methods can affect very large companies. This in turn will affect consumers.

With the appearance and development of the World Wide Web and other electronic strategies for mass interchanges, buyer protection has turned into an outstanding issue. Individual data, when abused or deficiently secured, can bring about wholesale fraud, budgetary extortion, and different problems that altogether cost individuals, organizations, and governments a significant number of dollars every year. What 's more, Internet violations and common question devour court assets, confound legislators, and police offices, and produce untold individual exacerbation. (http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/consumer-privacy)

Take a moment to think about how frequently the average individual feeds the Internet information and whether or not that information is related to personal interests, hobbies, or even dislikes of a specific person. Now lets take it a step further; the average individual willingly makes vital and sensitive information available to the unknown, information such as: credit/ debit card information, social security numbers, personal conversations, and even frequented locations specific to that one individual. On August 6, 1991, the Internet became live but there was no telling what it would eventually become over the years. Moving forward, over the course of nearly the last two decades, most people are guilty of giving up what is known as sensitive information exchange for services. Unfortunately, these same people are not aware of the consequences that follow. A study from 2015 hypothesizes that, “Adolescents will report less concern regarding their privacy compared to young adults and adults”, showing that our society is moving towards a point where our future generation does not hold value to their privacy (Steign 301). As a direct result, average individuals who are engaged with the Internet are tailored specific ads, meticulously tabbed by the government along with other organizations, and surrendering their privacy overall.