For the article that was given to us for this blog
assignment, I decided to focus on the “USACM Recommendations and their Effect
on Privacy-Enhanced Personalized Systems.” These recommendations were seemingly
interesting to read and provided a reasonable thought process on how we as a
society should approach this new topic of personalization and privacy. The
USACM stated at the end of their little article box that “allowing users to
verify their data seems to be only solution for assuring data accuracy.”
The spiel of information breaks the need for privacy enhanced
personalization down into five categories: minimization, consent, openness,
access and accuracy. I plan on focusing on what I believed to the three best
principles. When it came to the minimization principles, the USACM decided to
comment on how it would be best for companies to only collect, use and store
information that they needed for the time that they needed. This would prevent companies from 1. taking information
that would not be needed for any non-personalization reason and 2. keeping this
information for long periods of time where it might “slip” into another
companies hands. Consent was mainly
stated in the fact that it is important for companies to make sure that
it is ok to grab personal information from the individual before they do so. I
believe that most companies do this; however, I’m unsure if there is any way to
“take back” the consent you have given without removing yourself completely
from the companies grasp. (The on/off option switch that was mention would be a
lovely thing to have.) Lastly, the access principle that was discussed seems
fairly important to today’s generation. In order for a person to feel more at
ease, he/she always needs to know what information is out there for the world
to see. The access principle ensures that whenever an individual feels
uncomfortable or has a question about what exactly a company has access to they
are able to check and then refer back to the consent principle, where they will
be able to say that they do not give consent for whatever they found during the
access stage.
I finish this post with the question of whether or not we
will actually be able to regulate the multitude of companies that use personal information.
On regulation: I have no idea how we would. Obviously, if were illegal it'd be harder for companies to sell/use that information, but it would only affect the countries (or even states) who passed that legislation, which isn't everyone. And how can you even tell until you start getting spam emails and odd advertisements? It's a difficult task, clearly.
ReplyDeleteYour right, it would be best if companies only keep the information they need. Most companies would then in turn say they need all the consumers information, and use that information at their leisure. If they would only keep the information for a short period of time say 30 days or less it would be the perfect fix. I did not notice this section in the article it's great that you made that point.
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