Attracting users to social networking sites and cloud computing sites is all about building trust. However, if recent news is anything to go by, consumers would be right to consider that the trust they have put into the Internet companies that run these services has been betrayed.
Between 2006 and the beginning of 2010, search engine giant Google started a project to map and digitally photograph every road in every major city in more than 30 countries for its product Google Streetview. But images, it appears, is not all that the Streetview cars collected. It now turns out that Google collected over 600 Gigabytes of data from users of public and unprotected Wi-Fi access routers - which included Web pages visited and emails. All this was collected without the prior knowledge or permission of the router owners.
But most criticism surrounding data privacy is currently reserved for Facebook, which has faced an extreme anger from consumers when millions of users suddenly found their private details exposed and searchable on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Facebook, whose privacy policies have come under attack both at home and abroad, now faces a stiff fine for storing non-users’ personal data without their permission. Founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be relenting and is now beefing up security.
The issue came to the fore in recent months among concern that Facebook’s confusing privacy settings were making it possible for Internet stalkers, cyber criminals and even nosy neighbours to gain a wealth of information about its users without their knowledge or permission.
What all these companies deal in is trust. Without trust, we would not allow them access to our private information. Therefore, it’s important that they maintain our trust. If social networking becomes increasingly important to companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, they will have to be careful not to violate their users’ trust in the future.
(Adapted from https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2010/07/who-owns-your-personal-data/ )