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When you assess how you connect via technology, you not only save time, you protect your assets (I.D. and private information) and in essence your voice. Data cannot be sold or hacked if it is not in their database.
How do companies build up their well of data? Increasingly, companies are implementing new technology poised as a convenience or to support easy access that amounts to data collection.
Here are some examples:
A big box store app offers face or fingerprint ID to log in and skip the long username and password entry. A large financial institution enacts a policy where they use your voice for vocal recognition in communications.
The latter I saw up close when I learned the default was to opt into the policy and you had to call to opt out. This default is not always easy to get out of. It took me one hour and three different countries to un-enroll. By the end, it felt like bullying as the representative stated that if I didn’t allow permission to use voice verification, they would hang up. After clarifying that I would allow them to record my voice for the well-known quality control recordings most organizations take, but I would not allow them to use my voice for voice recognition, they read me a statement and confirmed I opted out.
Why is this important? I am increasingly coming across companies that solely focus on data mining. Some sell you their service of “helping businesses with accessible and customizable data analysis solutions,” others solely focus on acquiring businesses not for what the business does but for the information they hold. I met the CEO of one of these businesses at a high-level economics forum and in three years, by buying businesses for the data they had, made $3 billion. That is a lot of selling of you as data.
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
Next time, ask yourself what rights are you giving away for the use of that free app or speedy login? Or as a company owner or entrepreneur, what is your information worth? If you do not want to read the fine print, just know that most likely you are giving them access to a lot of what you say, do or use with your phone or account, and most likely, they are making money off of it. You are the owner of you and if anyone should make money on you, it is you.
Somehow the business model went from, let’s pay you to give us information we need and call it market research to, give us access to you and we let you use this app.
If you’re collecting data on your customers, consider the value of privacy for your customers. Although my festival division has been offered money many times for our list or portions of our 80,000 newsletter subscribers and even more money if we have a cell phone number, we do not share information or sell. We may introduce two parties that could do great things together. Most times we vet how that person communicates in an email before connecting.
Assessing is a great tool in many areas of life. In technology, it only takes a second to assess what info and access you want to give. Consider adding your name to the no-cost “Do Not Call” list so that even if your info is sold, you have some level of protection.
