“Should consumers be able to control how companies collect and use their personal data?” Natasha Singer reports for The New York Times. “At a dinner honoring privacy advocates this week in Washington, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave a speech in which he endorsed this simple idea. Yet his argument leveled a direct challenge to the premise behind much of the Internet industry — the proposition that people blithely cede their digital bread crumbs to companies in exchange for free or reduced-priced services subsidized by advertising.”
“‘You might like these so-called free services,’ Mr. Cook said. ‘But we don’t think they’re worth having your email or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose,'” Singer reports. “Now a study from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has come to a similar conclusion: Many Americans do not think the trade-off of their data for personalized services, giveaways or discounts is a fair deal either. The findings are likely to fuel the debate among tech executives and federal regulators over whether companies should give consumers control over the information collected about them.”
“55 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that ‘it’s O.K. if a store where I shop uses information it has about me to create a picture of me that improves the services they provide for me,'” Singer reports. “Among people who took part in the survey, 84 percent strongly or somewhat agreed that they wanted to have more control over what marketers could learn about them; at the same time, 65 percent agreed that they had come to accept that they had little control over it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the insidiousness of diminished expectations.
Consumers have all the power necessary, they just have to not be lazy and instead resolve to make the proper choices. Before signing up for something, do a little research.
If this means not participating in certain social media circle-jerks and uploading every photo you’ve ever taken to an internet advertising firm, so be it.
SEE ALSO:
Tim Cook gets privacy and encryption: We shouldn’t surrender them to Google – June 4, 2015
Dvorak: Google Photos is too creepy – June 3, 2015
Tim Cook attacks Google, U.S. federal government over right to privacy abuses – June 3, 2015
The price you’ll pay for Google’s ‘free’ photo storage – June 3, 2015
Apple CEO Tim Cook champions privacy, blasts ‘so-called free services’ – June 3, 2015
Passing on Google Photos for iOS: Read the fine print before you sign up for Google’s new Photos service – June 1, 2015
Why Apple’s Photos beats Google Photos, despite price and shortcomings – May 30, 2015
Is Apple is losing the photo wars? – May 29, 2015
How Google aims to delve deeper into users’ lives – May 29, 2015
Apple CEO Cook: Unlike some other companies, Apple won’t invade your right to privacy – March 2, 2015
Survey: People trust U.S. NSA more than Google – October 29, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
Apple will no longer unlock most iPhones, iPads for government, police – even with search warrants – September 18, 2014
U.S. NSA watching, tracking phone users with Google Maps – January 28, 2014
U.S. NSA secretly infiltrated Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say – October 30, 2013
Google has already inserted some U.S. NSA code into Android – July 10, 2013
Court rules NSA doesn’t have to reveal its semi-secret relationship with Google – May 22, 2013
Edward Snowden’s privacy tips: ‘Get rid of Dropbox,” avoid Facebook and Google – October 13, 2014