In my view, it seems that world is powered by a “Data Economy”, as (almost) every part of our lives involves data, in some way, shape or form. It powers our businesses, social interactions, purchases, general inquires and with AI – almost everything else!
On the positive side, it creates opportunities, drives innovation, expands our products and services to enhance our desired customer experience and it continuously changes and/or improves our everyday lives. Think Alexa, Echo, Ecobee, Uber, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and the almighty Google, as examples. How many of us regularly use a few of them daily? I would bet society is becoming reliant on more and more of them each day; which makes me wonder, how did we ever get by without them?
On the other hand, as technology proliferates our lives, our personal distribution of our data is becoming commonplace. In other words, we are the enablers of Big Tech obtaining our data and using it at will. For example, how many of us have actually read Facebook’s “Acceptance Agreement”? In most cases, Big Tech, has pages of T&C’s so that the majority of us, simply click “Accept” – is it because we trust them, or we’re too busy to analyze it all? As our personal data and its exposure is growing exponentially, this ultimately increases our privacy risk, dissemination of sensitive (i.e. banking) information, and the chances of it being compromised or even held ransom. It is no wonder then, that some of us feel that we have lost control of “who has access” to our personal information.
I don’t want to go through what you should or shouldn’t do at this time (but may at a later date), regarding securing your personal data, as I simply just wanted to provide you with a “snapshot” of what various organizations have on you.
Are you shocked?
Graphics: Complements of https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-does-big-tech-know-about-you-basically-everything
It was the 3rd night before Christmas. The elves were busy working, building, and assembling everything to do with the “Big Day”. The toys would travel down the line with each adopting their own expertise to the required task at hand, along with similes, songs and the hand off “high fives”.
The inevitable happened at 12:13pm as everything suddenly stopped! The line was idle, the toys were stationary, the elves confused, and then all of them simply looked at Tommy. Tommy was the Grand Elf. He was responsible for the entire workshop; everything from children’s requests, inventory management, manufacturing, packaging and labeling, right down to the toy placement into the sleigh. Any other month, everyone would be on lunch now, but there are no lunch breaks in December. Just shorter hours with more shifts.
Bobby thanked him for his confirmation and continued with “It’s the Wish List Server. Everything we do revolves around it. The children’s wishes are maintained on it, along with all their information, addresses, language, right down to proper positioning on the sleigh for organized for drop offs. That’s why the line stopped.”
Suddenly, the alarm clock sounded 6:30 and Bob reached over to shut it off.
Last year he encountered a server malfunction in his office and even though he maintained daily backups, the recovery process was a major headache! The full recovery took over well over 10 hours. He will never forget it as he had internal challenges with personnel that day regarding the data loss, work stoppage, customers that were confused and THE CHAT with his boss…as he thought he was going to get FIRED.
