As FTC cracks down, data ethics is now a strategic business weapon

https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/12/as-ftc-cracks-down-data-ethics-is-now-a-strategic-business-weapon/

Facebook recently received a fine of 5 billion dollars for handling private user information poorly and not protecting it as they should according to their privacy policy or government regulation. This is a small amount for Facebook, but it's an unprecedented number in terms of a fine for a technology company. It is expected that these sorts of fines will only grow as time goes on.

Facebook's damage was not only the fine but also the rise of a popular movement called #deletefacebook, encouraging users to remove their profiles from the website and live without invasive social media sites. It turns out that despite the fact that users usually don't read any website's privacy policy, terms of user or certain other agreements before ticking the box next to 'agree', they actually do care whether their data is in good hands.

80% of users claim to be more loyal to businesses that protect their data and privacy. Certain tech companies have started realising that although more data is good and can help their business, not every single metric should be recorded, at least not as raw information.

Depending on how you want to use the data, you can collect data from users in a way that censors specifics and avoids you knowing too much about an individual user but at the same time still provides you with usable and valuable data. 

I'll give the example of location. If I have access to a user's location and I collect the data of his exact location at a certain point in time, this is a breach of privacy and does not provide me with much better data than If I were to work out his average location locally then send that average to the server.

In the future, it may be worth looking into what data can be collected in a way that does not infringe on a user's privacy for all companies.

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