I think it is ethical for companies to gather your information and use it to sell you products and services, so long as the user understands what the company is doing with the data. This is the difficult part, and companies know that the vast majority of users won’t think for very long about what they may or may not do with the data. However, assuming users know that the company intends to do with their data, I think this is ethical, as users can enter into a voluntary agreement or an exchange of goods/services with the company. People that are willing to give a company like Google information that enables them to see more relevant advertisements (not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself) may believe this tradeoff is worth it in order to access Google’s services.
I think it is easy for people to forget that companies like Google and Facebook do not exist for the sole purpose of giving users exceptional, free products. You aren’t entitled to their products or services. The price you pay to use them is that these companies can collect data about you and sell advertisements targeted at you based on this data. If that is something that you are okay with, then go ahead and use their products and services. If it isn’t, then don’t! You can also control what data these companies actually collect on you. For example, at www.google.com/dashboard, you can control exactly what information Google saves, and even delete data they have already collected. The author of “Not OK, Google” seems very distraught by Google’s business model. I think the author is failing to keep in mind that users voluntarily use Google’s services – they are certainly not forced to. An argument could be made that users aren’t fully aware of what exactly Google does with the data they collect, but this is not discussed by the author. Yet, I believe being educated about what companies plan to do with the data they collect is extremely important. Many users don’t step back and look at the bigger picture, that no one service generally gives your life story to a company, but over time, the amount of data you share can be used to learn much more than you think. Companies should never be blindly trusted, but I don’t have a problem when people agree to give access to some of their data in exchange for powerful and useful services. Because of the sheer number of online services, I do fear that constantly considering privacy concerns is becoming increasingly difficult and users are increasingly blindly trusting companies. While it is difficult to learn what exactly companies will do with the data they collect, you also always have to consider that even if they don’t share this information with anyone else willingly, they may be hacked and their databases compromised, meaning your data could fall into the wrong hands.
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AuthorSenior computer science major at the University of Notre Dame ArchivesCategories |