Interest-based advertising is a critical component of Google's revenue. The company has stepped up testing of its FLoC initiative, which it calls a "privacy first" approach to targeted advertising. Read More
Data Privacy
Technological development has always outpaced privacy concerns, but never more so than in the past decade. Collection and centralization of personally identifiable information (PII), tracking of movements and digital surveillance are all at unprecedented levels. Regulations and laws are only just beginning to catch up to the ability of both governments and private entities to deploy these capabilities.
What exactly is there to worry about? The mass collection and centralization of data by giant multinationals such as Facebook and Google is as good of a place to start as any. Two decades of vacuuming up the personal data of users of various online services has created the most impressive marketing capabilities in history, but these profiles have astounding potential for damage when they are used the wrong way or fall into the wrong hands.
Unauthorized information that is captured in data breaches tends to find its way to massive “combo lists” that are sold and traded on the dark web. Social security numbers are added from this breach, home addresses and phone numbers from that one, personal health information from yet another. Soon, a frighteningly complete profile of millions of individuals is available to anyone willing to pay the asking price.
These are just the established data privacy issues. The emerging ones are even worse. High-quality facial recognition technology is just beginning to roll out across the public places of some countries. Artificial intelligence is not only making mass facial recognition possible, but magnifies the power and reach of any application that involves capturing and sorting information: scanning pictures, analyzing speech, sifting through text and location data. This threatens to not only shatter anonymity and privacy, but allow for highly advanced impersonation and take the concept of “identity theft” to new levels.
Some businesses chafe at the trouble and added expense of new and emerging data privacy regulations, but they are vital to both protecting rights and privacy and instilling confidence in end users. Customers want to be able to submit their payment information without worry about data breaches and identity theft, use services without wondering what is being done with their personal information and use devices without fear of surveillance or having location data tracked. The need for meaningful safeguards only grows greater as technological capabilities increase.
Though circumventing Apple’s new privacy rules with fingerprinting techniques can get one banned from the app store, major Chinese tech companies appear to be discussing just that out in the open. Read More
How Kirsten Daru of Tile and Sue Gaudi, formerly of The Globe and Mail went from CPO to GC, and why so many more will follow in their footsteps. Read More
A change to California's state privacy law is the first regulation to directly take on dark patterns, threatening civil penalties brought under the state's existing unfair competition laws. Read More
How can businesses walk the tightrope between using critical customer data and protecting their privacy? Emerging privacy technologies like blockchain and confidential computing provide an ideal solution. Read More
Facebook insiders comment on the battle against Apple's IDFA tracking changes. Biggest concern is that it will lose the ability to track the connection between ads shown on Facebook and sales made elsewhere. Read More
The Apple privacy complaint is significant as France Digitale is a major lobbying organization, representing over 2,000 companies that include most of the country's venture capital firms and entrepreneurs. Read More
Little-known private network of surveillance cameras called TALON has quietly taken hold in neighborhoods throughout the country with AI-enabled cameras have the ability to recognize objects (and people). Read More
The term “privacy” has officially become a homonym. How do we move forward when language, even basic definitions, are often at odds or even completely contradictory? Read More
As of 2019, Big Tech companies were not particularly popular as a new poll shows that negative views have increased since then, with only 34% of Americans now expressing any level of positive opinion. Read More