In an increasingly digitized & data-driven world your personal data has become a precious commodity as it is rightly called the “new oil”. The security of your personal data becomes paramount with the exchange of massive amounts of data online these days. Cyber security has thus become a key issue for consumers especially in the backdrop of the data breaches that have happened recently. This has not only highlighted the issue of lack of proper controls & safeguards at these big tech companies but also of how they use our personal data to monetize their business models.
It has badly tarnished the image of the tech companies who the consumers had come to trust with their data, and were much more comfortable buying services from them. No company seems to safe anymore. In 2018 alone, we have seen the social media giant Facebook reporting data breaches twice affecting millions of users each time. As if this wasn’t enough, a couple of days ago Google reported exposing the data of more than 500K users of its social network Google+ between 2015 & March 2018. The ironical part is that Google reported no misuse of data but in response to this incident has decided to completely shut down the portal, Huh? Apparently, Google didn’t disclose this earlier citing fear of regulatory scrutiny. Wondering if we should still trust these tech giants with our personal data?
European Data regulation like the GDPR is a step in the right direction in protecting customers’ data & these tech companies are now facing multi billion dollar lawsuits. On the side note, the Crypto industry is facing a similar situation with more than $927 million worth of digital money stolen to date this year – 3.5 times more than 2017. Strict regulations (for data usage) with proper safeguards (for security) need to be in place & enforced to halt this deteriorating situation. Before signing off, here are a couple of info graphics – first one showing the economic damage of a data breach in different countries & the second one detailing how your data is being used to monetize different business models.
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