Privacy Online: Then and Now

There was a time when privacy online wasn’t something we talked about, because it wasn’t an issue. But now we are seeing an influx of data hoarding activity and the public are feeling more and more unsafe online. We are all trapped in a ‘digital age’ which sees our information being exposed to all sorts. Although this lack of privacy is an annoyance for consumers, it’s welcomed with open arms by data hungry organisations that want to know anything and everything they can about you. Gone are the days of data confidentiality, time to greet the age of cyber-insecurity because our privacy is being disrupted.

In the past if we indicated online that we wanted to keep something private, that would be that. Nowadays there’s no such thing and it’s much more complicated to insure that everything is kept under wraps. Once a photo is taken or a word is digitally uttered, it’s out there for all to see. This is part of the new digital era we are witnessing and now brands even know what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Data demand is growing, yes. But we, the consumer put our personal information out into the stratosphere to be poached, knowing the consequences, so we can’t expect anything less.

Just last month I discovered my Achilles Heel, a radio competition called ‘Who’s on Heart?’. It’s disturbingly addictive and I was entering every day with my guesses, now my neediness has cursed me. It’s burdened with dozens of phone calls a day from unknown numbers telling me how I am owed billions of pounds or have been in a terrible accident. I have no evidence that this is from data poaching but I remain suspicious. The amount of personal data stored on the internet is expected to grow exponentially and looks as though it will be 44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009, so no wonder we feel a little exposed.

A few weeks later I again felt as though my online moves were being monitored. I was browsing flights for a summer holiday on EasyJet and noticed when I went back to look again the flight prices had risen. This is the same with any airline, not just EasyJet. In the past I usually just accept it and book under the assumption that the increase was a result of time passing. This time, simply out of curiosity, I searched the flights on my computer at work instead of my laptop at home. Sure enough, they were cheaper because I hadn’t searched using this IP address before. Through online tracking, this airline calculated my actions and knew I wanted to book the flight, so why not hurry me along with a little scare? My advice would be to clear your cache and cookies so your tracking history is erased, this way organisations don’t know your identity as well as they did and they will have to start stalking from scratch.

At the end of the day, we are all partly to blame for being pawns in this game played by brands online. Each of us makes up a part of the data that they are desperate for. Brands are prepared to take the chance to impinge on us and for now they are getting away with it. So they will continue to buy our data and pester us. We just need to keep finding ways to reserve some confidentiality, and disrupt the disruptors.

Georgia Scobie