This post was originally published on 17 May 2022
Update 19 May 2022
The numbers just keep getting bigger! This article in The Register, has the Irish Council on Civil Liberties, stating that our data is shared up to 987 times a day, when the Real Time Bidding (RTB) industry gets involved to auction your personal information, as you are actually visiting a website that serves adverts!
Privacy. Ad bidders haven’t heard of it, report reveals • The Register
This business is worth a lot of money – $117 billion last year – enough to pay for lobbyists to get politicians to relax laws that protect our personal information.
That would probably include, removing, the notices that websites have to show us when we initially arrive, that explains to us exactly what they intend to do with our data, so we can make an informed choice as to whether we continue and allow our information to be used in such a way! Does this interferes with RTB?
I have been in meetings and heard people (marketeers mainly) say that users do not like the the interruption to their browsing by boxes of questions they do not understand. Obviously it is such a drag to be interested in your personal data – as for the questions “they do not understand”, that is because the website designers and marketeers have written them to get a “click through without reading” response.
Can’t they just be satisfied with the “click through without reading” data and let those of us who care about our privacy choose whether we continue and what we share?
$117 billion says they will not be satisfied.
Original post
A lot!
Europeans’ data shared 376 times daily in advertising sales, report says – BBC News
Have a read of the BBC article to get the picture. There is a link below to the whole report.
This is interesting, when it is considered that the UK government has stated in the Queen’s Speech that they intend to reduce the burden on business and relax the GDPR rules. Is 376 opportunities to process and sell our privacy not enough?
This change of the law, may make it easier for whomever had the ear of government, and got them to think about reducing our privacy, but it may make our data interactions with European nations and probably the six states in the US that have good data handling laws (remember California has a bigger economy than the UK now) and other countries where we need equivalent data handling regulations, far more difficult. Transfer of data to countries and regions where privacy is just an entry in the dictionary will be easier.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
Further Reading
Privacy gets a boost in Connecticut – Smart Thinking Solutions
