Tag Archives: privacy

People Turn Toward “Data Banks” to Commoditize on their Purchase and User Behavior Profiles

Anyone who is anti “Big Brother”, this may not be the article for you, in fact, skip it. 🙂

 

The Pendulum Swings Away from GDPR

In the not so distant future, “Data Bank” companies consisting of Subject Matter Experts (SME) across all verticals,  may process your data feeds collected from your purchase and user behavior profiles.  Consumers will be encouraged to submit their data profiles into a Data Bank who will offer incentives such as a reduction of insurance premiums to cash back rewards.

 

Everything from activity trackers, home automation, to vehicular automation data may be captured and aggregated.    The data collected can then be sliced and diced to provide macro and micro views of the information.    On the abstract, macro level the information may allow for demographic, statistical correlations, which may contribute to corporate strategy. On a granular view, the data will provide “data banks” the opportunity to sift through data to perform analysis and correlations that lead to actionable information.

 

Is it secure?  Do you care if a hacker steals your weight loss information? May not be an issue if collected Purchase and Use Behavior Profiles aggregate into a Blockchain general ledger.  Data Curators and Aggregators work with SMEs to correlate the data into:

  • Canned, ‘intelligent’ reports targeted for a specific subject matter, or across silos of data types
  • ‘Universes’ (i.e.  Business Objects) of data that may be ‘mined’ by consumer approved, ‘trusted’ third party companies, e.g. your insurance companies.
  • Actionable information based on AI subject matter rules engines and consumer rule transparency may be provided.

 

 “Data Banks” may be required to report to their customers who agreed to sell their data examples of specific rows of the data, which was sold on a “Data Market”.

Consumers may have the option of sharing their personal data with specific companies by proxy, through a ‘data bank’ granular to the data point collected.  Sharing of Purchase and User Behavior Profiles:

  1. may lower [or raise] your insurance premiums
  2. provide discounts on preventive health care products and services, e.g. vitamins to yoga classes
  3. Targeted, affordable,  medicine that may redirect the choice of the doctor to an alternate.  The MD would be contacted to validate the alternate.

 

The curriated data collected may be harnessed by thousands of affinity groups to offer very discrete products and services.  Purchase and User Behavior Profiles,  correlated information stretches beyond any consumer relationship experienced today.

 

At some point, health insurance companies may require you to wear a tracker to increase or slash premiums.  Auto Insurance companies may offer discounts for access to car smart data to make sure suggested maintenance guidelines for service are met.

 

You may approve your “data bank” to give access to specific soliciting government agencies or private firms looking to analyze data for their studies. You may qualify based on the demographic, abstracted data points collected for incentives provided may be tax credits, or paying studies.

Purchase and User Behavior Profiles:  Adoption and Affordability

If ‘Data Banks’ are allowed to collect Internet of Things (IoT) device profile and the devices themselves are cost prohibitive.  here are a few ways to increase their adoption:

  1.  [US] tax coupons to enable the buyer, at the time of purchase, to save money.  For example, a 100 USD discount applied at the time of purchase of an Activity Tracker, with the stipulation that you may agree,  at some point, to participate in a study.
  2. Government subsidies: the cost of aggregating and archiving Purchase and Behavioral profiles through annual tax deductions.  Today, tax incentives may allow you to purchase an IoT device if the cost is an itemized medical tax deduction, such as an Activity Tracker that monitors your heart rate, if your medical condition requires it.
  3. Auto, Life, Homeowners, and Health policyholders may qualify for additional insurance deductions
  4. Affinity branded IoT devices, such as American Lung Association may sell a logo branded Activity Tracker.  People may sponsor the owner of the tracking pedometer to raise funds for the cause.

The World Bank has a repository of data, World DataBank, which seems to store a large depth of information:

World Bank Open Data: free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe.”

Here is the article that inspired me to write this article:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/you-might-be-wearing-a-health-tracker-at-work-one-day-2015-03-11

 

Privacy and Data Protection Creates Data Markets

Initiatives such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy initiatives which seek to constrict access to your data to you as the “owner”, as a byproduct, create opportunities for you to sell your data.  

 

Blockchain: Purchase, and User Behavior Profiles

As your “vault”, “Data Banks” will collect and maintain your two primary datasets:

  1. As a consumer of goods and services, a Purchase Profile is established and evolves over time.  Online purchases are automatically collected, curated, appended with metadata, and stored in a data vault [Blockchain].  “Offline” purchases at some point, may become a hybrid [on/off] line purchase, with advances in traditional monetary exchanges, and would follow the online transaction model.
  2. User Behavior (UB)  profiles, both on and offline will be collected and stored for analytical purposes.  A user behavior “session” is a use case of activity where YOU are the prime actor.  Each session would create a single UB transaction and are also stored in a “Data Vault”.   UB use cases may not lead to any purchases.

Not all Purchase and User Behavior profiles are created equal.  Eg. One person’s profile may show a monthly spend higher than another.  The consumer who purchases more may be entitled to more benefits.

These datasets wholly owned by the consumer, are safely stored, propagated, and immutable with a solution such as with a Blockchain general ledger.

Two Providers of Secure E-Mail Shut Down – NYTimes.com

Two Providers of Secure E-Mail Shut Down – NYTimes.com.

WORM storage for immutable E-Mail backups, or are they destroying that as well?  Sounds like prevention moving forward, and to willfully destroy previous emails, in light of this move, may be tantamount to obstruction of justice, if a subpoena is served at this point, to the clients.

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Under Code, Apps Would Disclose Collection of Data – NYTimes.com

Under Code, Apps Would Disclose Collection of Data – NYTimes.com.

I do not believe the disclosure of consumer information collected by mobile applications to provide mobile app transparency should be the only disclosure channel of consumer data collected.  I think that all of the web browsers should have an option to see, for the current web site, or application, the chart, or similar as mentioned in the NYT article, which is similar to nutrition details of food from the FDA.  That would allow for a majority of the disclosure, and would satisfy the consumer lobby groups.

Consumer collected data from all electronic sources should be disclosed in a simple manner similar to the ingredients label from the FDA.

 

China’s Baidu Digital Eyewear Targeted Solely for Government

China’s Baidu developing digital eyewear similar to Google Glass | Reuters.

Three paragraphs are extremely interesting, and imply military applications as well as policing their own people.

Kuo said the device will be mounted on a headset with a small LCD screen and will allow users to make image and voice searches as well as conduct facial recognition matches.

 

“What you are doing with your camera, for example, taking a picture of a celebrity and then checking on our database to see if we have a facial image match, you could do the same thing with a wearable visual device,” Kuo said.

 

We haven’t decided whether it is going to be released in any commercial form right now, but we experiment with every kind of technology that is related to search,” Kuo said. Kuo declined to comment on the other functions of the Baidu Eye or whether Baidu is working on other forms of wearable technology.

It implyies that targeted people who are targeted for ‘crimes’ such as civil disobedience, may be tracked in a database.  The last paragraph implies that the technology may be targeted for the ‘public’ / government sector use.  In addition, all governments may use this technologies at their borders easier recognition of targeted individuals.  I could also visualize other highly policed states, where terrorism is very active, to provide these glasses to transportation gatekeepers, such as bus drivers, or train conductor, where at the point of collecting tickets, they may be able to perform retinal recognition, and allow the collection of fees, depending on the accuracy of the technology, as well as identify them for any outstanding warrents for arrest.  A person may board a bus, and by identifying the person through facial, retinal, and/or voice recognition, if cleared a security check, the bus driver may ask automatically, would you like this fare deducted from your linked checking, or which credit card, ending in the last for digits.

This technology might eventually be mandated by the states within the EU.  That’s a thought, as well as the requirements to connect each border check to cross reference with Interpol, the World Health Organization (WHO) for the spread of possible infectious disease control, as well as local government warrents.

Brave New World.

Privacy, Eye Movement Technology, Twitter and Advertising

As I was reading my stream of tweets my brain started to wander and think about that new eye movement technology Samsung, and LG are/will utilize to change smartphone screens with your eye movements.  As I looked at words in the tweets, the idea occured to me that privacy laws will need to accommodate a new potential frontier in advertising, eye focus advertising.   If a person looks at a word in a tweet for 3 seconds,  all of that eye focus data, how a person of a certain demographic looks at a particular word, how long, possibly their facial expression,  index and abstract that information,  it could give the concept of advertising a whole new meaning.  Big marketing is watching what you’re watching.   Brave New World.

Sovereignty of Government Laws Supersede Multinational Corporation Processes

Personally, I think it is tantamount to invasion of privacy without probable cause if the countries are allowed to sequestor information on a particular citizen.  Is there privacy any more, or is every word spoken and written word should be assumed to be of public note.  Should citizens then counteract with encryption algorithms which take even the most powerful computers days, if not months to decrypt?  It allows no freedom of speech, but after all we are not a singular society of laws, we are multiple societies of conflictional  laws that do not coalesce into a unilateral or singular personal privacy law.  Therefore, multinational corporate conglomerates, are subject to conflictional personal rights laws, which cannot be easily reconciled. Which laws of what land takes precedence, especially if a specific communication originates in one country with specific laws and the end of the communication ends in a country with opposite laws, which require ring fencing.  Unilateral personal rights laws across the globe are problematic to global conglomerates, and inhibit progress.  There is no precedence to these laws which span communications between countries.  Unfortunately, a global unity such as a legal body of personal privacy protection as well as the protection of sovereignties does not exist.   Maybe an ISO ruling under the U.N, should have teeth to agreed upon and enforce rights that protect both the individual, group, and sovereignty when precedents dictates,  These legal matters inhibit progress, for better or for worse,  Thanks to the New York Times title, which sparked my neurons, Governments Worldwide Asking Google to Hand Over More Data

Amendment (12/04/12):

After thinking this through, the ultimate conclusion is the Google / China effect, whereby to respect the locality rules of the sovereignty, e.g. ring fencing data, content ratings, export of data, a multinational corporation isn’t excused from those rules just because they are the biggest player and can muscle their way into the country forcing their own process upon the local society.  We’ve had too much of that in human history.  Therefore, if, for example Google has a centralized data center for all of Europe based out of the U.K., and the Island of Jersey off the coast has ring fencing rules whereby you must keep the data within the country of origin , so if both sender and receiver reside on the Island of Jersey, the data must remain on the island.  Google, or any other multinational has two choices, figure out how to abide by local laws, and implement them, or make the executive decision to exit the market, just as they did with China.  In China, another major player sprung up in Google’s place in this market, and perhaps even more may spawn in Google’s place.  It is simply the cost of doing business in that country.  In our Island of Jersey example, Google might be required to build a small data center just to house the Island of Jersey specific data, for ring fencing compliance, and man it as well.  The cost, Google might think, outweighs the reward for them.  Basic economics.  Other, perhaps smaller companies, may jump in to seize the opportunity, which the multinational Google, walked away from based on their assessment of doing business.  This creates opportunities for other companies and people.  In fact, the people promoting this advertising campaign of a free internet, such as the multinationals, probably have the most to loose by imposing their process against the government laws of a sovereign land.