Your smartphone gently emits its notification sound while you are waking up. It knows your routine. The smartwatch alerts you about poor sleep quality though you already knew this without technological verification. During your morning coffee drink, your smartphone sends noise-canceling headphones advertising because you recently searched online for better sleep methods.
Coincidence? Think again.
In the current AI, IoT and Big Data age your digital information represents the modern form of wealth while your privacy stands as the entry fee. You paid this cost when you joined the system. The scary part? The transaction went unnoticed by the majority of people who accepted it.
Your Life, On Display
During previous times, people needed direct observation or eavesdropping to discover someone’s secrets because they did not share their personal details with digital platforms. Today, you give complete access to every aspect of your life to firms whose privacy statements span multiple books.
Your mobile phone maintains continuous monitoring of your geographical position. After disabling location services, your cell tower remains able to pinpoint your current location.
Your smart devices operate with continuous listening capabilities. The convenience Alexa and Siri provide comes at a cost because they do not forget any information they acquire.
The websites you visit display your search activities as an obvious record. You perform one search and afterward you start to see ads for that same item following you everywhere.
It’s not magic. It’s Big Data. Your online activities as well as your social media interactions along with video viewing behavior are tracked and evaluated before being used to forecast your next actions.
The Internet of (“Too Many”) Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) was meant to simplify our daily lives. Smart refrigerators join forces with smartwatches and smart TVs, and smart toothbrushes have entered the market too. The downside of these devices is that each one acts as a surveillance tool.
Your smart TV? The device monitors your activities during your viewing sessions.
Your smart speaker? The system detects many things beyond your awareness.
Your fitness tracker? The device tracks your time spent sitting on the couch.
The problem? These electronic devices both gather information in addition to distributing it through networks. Often, without you knowing.
Big Data: The Invisible Puppet Master
Big Data functions as an unseeable digital accounting system that tracks your entire internet activity as well as your offline movements.
Business enterprises gather information from your profile. The information gets exchanged between companies who analyze it for behavioral modification purposes. Your every visit to a website together with your use of apps and interactions with posts allows algorithms to forecast and manipulate what you will do next.
Ads appear in your social media feed precisely when you start thinking about a particular item.
It’s not mind-reading. It’s pattern recognition. Through its AI systems, companies process thousands of facts relating to your personal identification such as geographic information and online activity behavior and shopping history to determine your future desires in advance of your awareness.
Scary? It gets worse.
Facebook alongside Cambridge Analytica faced a public controversy in 2018 after collecting personal data from millions of users, which they used to influence elections. People willingly gave their data to the companies by completing a basic personality quiz while the organizations required no hacking process.
Artificial Intelligence serves as an unseen decision-making force which defines what you view and how you think and execute decisions.
Artificial intelligence exists throughout every part of modern life as it determines news content and career options and lending decisions. Sounds efficient, right? The revelation about AI bias emerges when you understand its existence.
An AI system for hiring applications rejected female candidates after receiving training data from predominantly male recruitment activities. The U.S. court implemented another AI system which consistently identified Black defendants as high-risk defendants while white defendants received lower risk classifications.
The problem? AI isn’t some all-knowing genius. AI reaches its limits based on the quality of training data it receives.
The Illusion of Privacy
People often say to themselves that they have no hidden information. Why should I care?”
Here’s why:
- Your information can become evidence that harms your position. Insurance organizations will leverage your smartwatch health information to hike your premium rates. AI predictions about your financial conduct would lead banks to refuse granting you loans.
- Your data which is released into the public domain will persist indefinitely. The removal of an application through deletion does not eliminate the data this application gathered from users. Ever googled yourself? The actual data collection amounts to only the beginning.
The truth? You can’t fully opt out. Various protective measures exist to help you establish security.
So, What Can You Do?
While you cannot leave the digital space behind, it is possible to establish effective defensive strategies.
1. Be Smart About What You Share
People need to prevent the reckless distribution of personal information. Online quizzes and surveys require double thought before submission.
2. Lock Down Your Devices
- Turn off unnecessary tracking.
- Use encrypted messaging apps.
- Cover your webcam. (Yes, you should.)
3. Take Control of Your Data
- Regularly review app permissions.
- A Virtual Private Network enables tracking resistance by making it more complicated for monitoring activities.
- You should remove all accounts which you do not currently need from your active online presence.
Final Thought: Who’s Really in Control?
Your present data serves as the fuel for a system that maintains your continuous involvement as well as your spending habits while creating predictable behavior. AI systems as well as IoT solutions and Big Data technology are not inherently bad, but fair questions remain about their current implementation. That’s another story.
The real issue is not whether you have information to conceal from others. One does not need to hide anything to face this question. The central issue is whether you want privacy to remain as both a right or a luxury in the world.
