What is the importance of privacy? If you’re asking this question today and are looking for an answer because you aren’t aware of it’s importance, well, it’s very, very important.
Monetary value is value in currency that a person, business, or the market places on a resource, product, or service. In fact, most goods and services in our modern economy are priced based on monetary value.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/monetary-value-definition-examples-quiz.html
Do you know what holds an extremely high monetary value today? Data.
Data collection happened even before the internet exploded. People had to write and fill forms for everything, accountants would use pen and paper, people would visit stationery stores to buy files, folders, pens and papers, libraries had visiting cards, memberships and records of books and who borrowed them and where.
So what’s changed from then and now? Why should you stress so much on the importance of privacy? What has changed is accessibility. Technology evolved, strengthened human beings and made everything easier, and more accessible. Humans remained the same, everything around them got smarter.
Back then, if someone wanted to know something from some time back or find out some information about someone, they would have to dig through tons of paper-work, which would take them hours and multiple human resources too sometimes. Now, you type what you want in a search box and you have your results presented to you in a nice format within seconds. Technology has evolved so much, a couple of lines of code can show you statistics which mathematicians and statisticians would take hours and days to study and prepare. It’s crazy, it really is.
Data comes from everywhere online. Every website you visit, app you use, link you click… heck even the amount of time you spend on a web page is data, what time you visit is data, where you are reading from is data – even the kind of device you’re using to read this piece is data. But where does all this data come from?
Sources of Data
Data comes from two different sources – the one’s we authorise and the one’s we don’t. However, there’s a secret source as well – the reason why you must understand the importance of privacy.
- Authorized Data
The data we wish to give – like our names in a form, email address, phone number etc. - Unauthorised Data
The data that is available for collection without our knowledge, like getting your location from your IP address, or your gender and DOB from your google account when you sign up to a website using Google. - The Secret Source
This is the most crucial one, and 99% of us fall victims to this. The data we give away when we don’t read the Terms & Conditions of a service. The data we give when we hurriedly press next on every page of a form just to start using something quickly. The data that once gone, really there’s no taking back. Case Study: FaceApp
Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
What can you do?
I’m not going to say one must read all the terms and conditions, nobody does that. They’re pages long and most of it is standard and all of it is boring. We’re practical guys. But when it is short, try reading it. If a service does not have on, be aware. And if the service seems ask for lots of permissions or does some weird stuff which you think would require your data, be careful.
Many people use a VPN to stay safe and protected. But even that’s not going to offer you 100% privacy, that just makes it harder for those snoopy organisations. Snap Search is built on similar principles where we collect NO data, require NO permissions and value our user’s privacy the most.
