As we increasingly shop, play, work, and do business online, digital privacy has become a major issue. Tracking, retargeting, and customer analytics are all undesirable web activities that have made consumers feel like they’re being stalked. How does this happen? What information is gathered online? Who collects it? Who should be held accountable for safeguarding our privacy? And how might we properly safeguard it ourselves?
You’re being watched
The majority of everything you do online is recorded, analyzed, and then made public by tracking technology. It’s everywhere. The websites you browse, the items you purchase, and the information you share with friends. Your digital privacy is compromised.
Much of the web has been based on digital advertising since the 1990s. During that Web 1.0 decade or so, a piece of code installed in online browsers, known as a "cookie," began monitoring people's behavior as they surfed the internet. Marketers utilized the data to target advertisements to users, so someone interested in gardening or cats would get advertisements about those products and themes.
With the evolution of Web 2.0, after the iPhone and Android app stores were created in 2008 advertisers began obtaining data on what individuals performed inside apps by inserting invisible trackers. This information was combined with cookie data and shared with data brokers in order to provide even more precise ad targeting.
Every day, tracking technologies improve in capability. Cookies reduce you to a ‘number’ so that you can be tracked online. Companies will go to any length to ensure that you can be followed, and there goes your digital privacy.
Cookies are a block on your digital privacy
The primary motivation for tracking is advertising. Your online profile is sold to the highest bidder moments after your website visit begins. Google, Facebook, and other ad tech firms have a greedy need for data - the more information they have about you, the more money they can make. And they certainly have been making billions of dollars for years - abusing your data day in day out for profit.
Companies all over the world are doing this. Facebook’s data privacy scandal and illicit use of profile information affected up to 87 million users. Authorities recently found Apple and Google were abusing user data by aggressively acquiring it for commercial purposes. The list goes on, and on.
Yet despite these crimes, none have gone to jail. Only ever a fine - a slap on the wrist in the grand scheme of things compared to how much money they are making from illegally obtaining your data.
What tracking means for individuals
Tracking is a concern since we are getting more unclouded while tracking remains hidden.
Companies have greater control over us thanks to tracking. Newsfeeds are adjusted, adverts are tailored, and even prices can be updated.
Personalized pricing is a potentially discriminatory technique in which prices are set at different levels for each individual customer based on an estimate of their willingness and ability to pay.
According to a new study by Dr. Zofia Bednarz, Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Sydney, insurers may be able to collect your online and other data using models such as new machine learning algorithms - and aside from anti-discrimination laws, there are no effective constraints on them using that data to price contracts, and purportedly, decline policies.
Although browser vendors have since disabled the loophole and the function is frowned upon, a few years ago websites could track users via the battery status of their devices. Being able to provide battery life in seconds potentially created a pseudo identifier for each mobile device meaning it could have identified you and tracked the sites you visited.
Is our digital privacy being properly protected?
Is change too slow?
As more examples of tracing personal data for improper reasons have emerged, digital privacy has become a hot topic, and some change is happening, albeit slowly.
Google had planned to gradually ban technologies for tracking users' web activity, or cookies, from Chrome in mid-2023, eventually eliminating them entirely later that year. However, they have postponed their phase-out plans in order to address growing concerns from regulators and competitors in the digital advertising market. Some might say they have delayed so that they can continue to make more money from abusing people’s data for yet another year. As the only browser supplier in the world, they seem to be getting away with it, as they have done for the last decade or so.
Also, Facebook is working on ways to target people with advertising based on information acquired from their devices while not sharing personal data with third parties. If you click on an advert for used cars, Facebook can share that insight with other marketers who can then display used car ads to that group. It’s a little less intrusive than sharing email addresses or other personal information with advertising, but is it enough?
But are these changes just the lesser of two evils? Will we ever really know how our data is used?
GDPR and other digital privacy regulations are beginning to intervene
Luckily, digital privacy legislation is on the side of the user. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted on May 25 2018 by the European Union (EU) and imposes requirements and GDPR fines on companies anywhere that target or collect data about EU citizens. However, these fines are only 2-4% of the organization’s yearly revenue. If they are making $10 billion from abusing customer data, they probably won’t mind paying those ‘small’ penalties!
Following suit around the world, other data privacy laws that fight against exploiting user data have come into force. For example, in the US, there are now five states that enact consumer data privacy laws - California, Virginia, Colorado, Utah, and Connecticut.
The Web2 + Web3 solution
How did we get to this point? Because Web2 is mostly governed by big tech, people have no idea what true privacy and ownership feel like. When we downloaded an app or joined up for a Web service, we agreed to the terms of service. Yet, beyond user permission, it also embodies Web 2.0 concepts of sharing and cooperation.
The rules guiding the future generation of the Internet, known as Web3, may offer a solution to some of the problems that users face today.
Web3 apps are based on a new concept of user data ownership and control - blockchain is a distributed ledger that gives people more choice over how their data is collected and monetized. Therefore, Web3 technology has the potential to empower society by restoring control to users who will remain in charge of communication and storage.
However, Web3 in its entirety isn’t quite here yet, so the technology in combination with Web2 is leading us to better privacy now. Web3 is stepping up thanks to the industry's numerous innovative communities, and since the surveillance line has been well and truly crossed, the privacy-first approach should be the only approach that every company around the world adopts.
Data abuse, tracking, and illegal activities MUST come to an end. More and more regulators are ruling against the Big Tech companies making money from illegally gathered data. Many Data Protection Authorities are advising people to stop using this kind of tech without additional measures to protect them. The simplest solution? Find a new product that can be used lawfully.
Our privacy-first solution is designed to protect humankind from Big Tech’s systematic abuse in marketing (Digital Twins, Soulbound Tokens, DID, and similar concepts of protocolization of humans included.) by combining AesirX + Concordium ID Layer to protect users’ personal data; so it cannot be exploited. Now everyone has a choice to use technology that isn’t based on abusive strategies and where ownership of data is 1st party.
We’re working tirelessly on AesirX - evolving Web2 with Web3 to enable the future of privacy-first on the world wide web!
Web2 + Web3 = AesirX
