“Claiming you don't care about it right in privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
– Edward Snowden
We live in the Information Age. And today information is the new oil. Every Big Tech company is looking for our data without our consent. The most valuable companies in the world, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and the Facebook, collect data for their targeted ads. All these companies are making many billions of dollars just by selling our data to inexperienced advertisers.
Many people know about targeted advertising, but do not pay much attention to it. They think it's good to see ads that are relevant to them. However, they don't realize the negative impact of the methods companies use to collect data and how it can harm them.
Sounds weird, huh?
Big tech companies (and the secret services) are collecting our data and building profiles beyond our imaginations. They track our every move and activity and use it to build a detailed picture of who we are, what we do and what we like. This information is then sold to companies for various purposes such as targeted advertising, market research and more.
Η Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly used millions of Facebook users' data to create psychological profiles, is one example of how data can be misused, and it's not the only one.
Ο Cardinal Richelieu he understood the value of follow-up when he famously said:
"If any man gave me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I should find in them something to hang him."
Watch someone long enough and you'll find something to arrest them or just blackmail them with. Scary, but it's really true. See that.
Surveillance capitalism:
“Personal information is increasingly being used to enforce standards of behavior. Information processing is evolving into an essential component of long-term manipulative strategies aimed at shaping and adapting individual behavior."
Surveillance capitalism or Surveillance capitalism from Surveillance capitalism is a new economic logic that has spread beyond tech companies and into various other sectors, including insurance, automobiles, health, education, finance, and "smart" and "personalized" products, not to mention politics .
This new logic exploits human behavior for profit by collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data to predict and influence behavior.
The consequences of this exploitation are difficult to see and predict, as decision-making rights disappear and individuals become increasingly dependent on large corporations for their privacy and security.
The reality is that we are constantly being watched online by almost everyone, from the big tech companies, advertising agencies, hackers to the secret services.
The Kaspersky experiment
Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity company, conducted a social experiment in which it offered clothes in exchange for privacy. However, the majority of participants declined to provide their personal information due to privacy concerns.
In conclusion, the Kaspersky experiment highlights the fact that people generally value their personal data and are reluctant to share it, especially when the process is so clear.
But when the process was invisible they do it without problem, for example on the internet. The normalization of social networks and online services has made it easier for big tech companies to collect and monetize our data without our express consent.
After all, does privacy matter? Has it ceased to be a fundamental human right?
