To protect your privacy better, it might be worth taking a moment to follow the money.
First, there are criminals who just want your details so they can impersonate you and rob you. They want your name, birthday, social security number, account ids, and passwords. These data help them gain direct access to your money. It’s a very short list, and these data are high value. By all means, lock them down as best as you can, and good luck with that.
But your digital privacy is about so much more than that, though. What about your blood pressure? Your Google search history? Your Netflix queue? The items you bought online and the ones you left behind in your cart?
Once we get past passwords and credit card numbers, people have opinions about protecting your other digital records. You will struggle with HIPAA forms and click on “accept cookies” banners. You’ll be asked to give consent… but for what exactly?
Criminals don’t have the slightest interest in what your blood pressure was 3 months ago, or whether you googled a recipe for mixing a cosmopolitan.
These digital records are raw ingredients for a product. A very valuable product that
Your clicks, your profile demographics are raw ingredients. Before your private data is of any use to an advertiser, these raw ingredients are turned from
What I’m talking about here is commercial exploitation of your digital history. The world of ad targeting is big. Global digital ad spending in 2021 was estimated at around $521 billion. But first, before you can be targeted, you have to be labeled.
Take a moment and look at it from the perspective of the advertisers who are handing over that $521 billion. They’re not doing it out of charity. They’re doing it because they think they’re getting value for the money they spend.
Targeting affinity
There is a disconnect between consent and use.
The battles over privacy
Data are the raw ingredients for
The right labels follow the money consent ad-targeting firms labels, profiles