Should Companies Collect Information About You?

Today many of websites make money collecting information about what people look for on the internet. Is this correct? Will everybody agree with the fact of everything that we look for on the internet will be collected? However these companies have terms of conditions and unfortunately a person had to agree to use the benefits of the service. For example, if a person use Google, they can collect all the person’s data used from their services “We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful or the people who matter most to you online. We collect information in two ways: Information you give us” and “Information we get from your use of our services” (Google Privacy Policy).Although some argue that this data is collected for our benefit, we do not have the choice, we just have to agree and use internet carefully.

Some say that these companies save collected data for further use and filter what we want to see. However, this argument does not take into account that maybe another person is using a friend’s computer or even a person who looked for a new car and after bought, the advertises are still showing cars. Anyone who uses Google services already notices that. Google collects information from our emails and searches on their search engine, to select what kind of advertising they should display for us. Although we should be able to permit the data collect. It is not everybody who likes to give his informations to the companies.

Others argue that companies collect data like credit card informations to make the payment process faster. However all the user’s data are stored on the company’s servers, and if some person stole this information they will have thousands of people’s credit card information. For example, during a breach in the Target systems hackers stole thousands of customer’s credit card information. Target said "40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been impacted between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013" (Bicchierai). Some companies also offer services with automatic payment, as they have the person’s credit information, when they see, the payment was already done. For example Amazon Prime. Amazon keep all credit information from their customer, and they offer prime service with the first’s months for free. However when the service ends they automatically renew, charging the customer with his credit card.

They also argue that mapping each person’s characteristics , the company will know what people with the same ones are looking for, and with these data they will meet our needs better. However we must decide when we want to share our informations to help the company grow because these are our personal data, and they should not be used without permission.  For example, Walmart collect data about what the person are looking for and what they bought, so if someone else are looking for the same thing they will suggest the product that other people bought. Recently Google started a new system that save people’s location if they are using a smartphone with Android (Google’s operational system to smartphones). This system is activated for default, and it saves all the person’s location. “When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers” (Google Privacy Policy). However, a lot of users around the world do not even know about this system, so they do not have a choice to keep it active or not. If someone has access to all this data, they will know a lot of information about the person, like their routine and preferences. We really need all of our information stored?

In conclusion we have to take care about what we use on internet and what and where we buy. There are some good companies who will take care of your data. However, there are a lot of other companies that are not so serious and also there are not protected against hackers. How we do not have choice to share or not our information we must choice carefully what we will share. We have to take care and choose carefully who we want to trust.

References

Google Privacy Policy. Web 27 April 2014 <http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>

Bicchierai, Lorenzo “Hackers Steal Credit Card Data From Up to 40 Million Target Customers” 19 December 2013. Web 27 April 2014 < http://mashable.com/2013/12/19/target-data-breach/>