Weaponization of Data

The weaponization of data, as a term, has a dramatic sound to it.

The reality is that data, in the wrong hands, can be as lethal as any dangerous weapon that can harm you.

The unprecedented level of influence the FAANG companies have on our lives came to light with the recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytics fiasco.

If you are not familiar with the term FAANG, you should be. Mostly used in the financial circles, it is an acronym for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — the five large tech companies on the planet.

We have all come to accept the fact that Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other social and digital media behemoths collect and leverage data on individuals. That is their business model.

Our Internet providers and cable companies know our web search habits. We don’t have a lot of choices on that front.

We have willingly compromised our privacy.

However, when it comes to financial institutions, we hold them to a different standard. We expect them to respect our privacy.

So, when I stumbled upon a legal disclosure on Pay Pal’s website, it caught me by surprise.

It was titled “List of Third Parties (other than PayPal Customers) with Whom Personal Information May be Shared.”

The list had over six-hundred names on it! Six hundred companies that potentially have information on me.

PayPal is not even a social media company. The last time I checked, they were in the business of payment processing. But they were sharing my information with others, potentially for financial gain.

I expected that a financial institution like PayPal would protect my data. PayPal sharing my data would be like credit rating agencies like Equifax collecting and selling my personal information.

Wait, Equifax does it too!

Don’t believe it?

Check out this article on Inc.com titled “Equifax collects your data, and then sells it.”

That’s a little disconcerting.

There is a subtle difference between what we think we agreed to, and what companies like Facebook and others can access through their terms of service that we accept without reading.

For instance, did you know that Facebook reads your private “Messenger” communications?

I didn’t.

Having information is one thing, using it is an entirely different matter.

Remember the massive outcry when the New York-based Journal News published the names and addresses of handgun owners in Westchester and Rockland counties.

The data was publicly available. And yet, coming in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the folks whose information suddenly became public, felt victimized.

Weaponization of data!

Around six years ago, PNAS, the respected scientific journal, published an article titled “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behaviour.”

The article concluded that “Facebook likes can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender.”

It is hard to believe that a simple Facebook “Like” can be used to make so many inferences!

In the world of data analytics, six years is a lifetime. The level of granularity that Facebook and others can glean from the data collected from us can now be deemed weapons-grade.

Your search habits, health information, financial status, sexual proclivities, and other behavioural traits are available to your social media companies for them use as they deem fit.

Until now, we may have been naïve and believed that the data was for targeted marketing purposes.

The recent Facebook fiasco has given us pause for thought.

If lax controls and regulations can put our information in the hands of unscrupulous operators, we are in for trouble.

For some of us, the train may have already left the station. We can only try to be more cautious about what we share in the future. Alternatively, we can go the extreme route and delete our profiles on platforms like Facebook.

The self-regulation model hasn’t worked.

Governments are stepping in.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced by the European Union in 2016 will become enforceable in May 2018. North America has lagged behind.

To some extent, I can understand the dilemma.

It is tough to regulate an application that rides on the Internet without regulating the Internet itself. After all, we all want an Internet that is open and free of unwanted controls, don’t we?

Note: A version of this post appeared on Medium under the title: We All are Just Sitting Ducks.