The business of big internet companies like Google and Facebook is personal data.  Every time we search for something online or click on something we are interested in, we are providing big tech companies with valuable information.  All this data is sold to third parties, mostly advertisers, who will use it to better target their potential clients and to analyze the market and the trends.

This exchange of likes and clicks for a more personalized internet experience seems harmless, but the data collection is getting every day more invasive. Technology advances and devices have new and more complex capabilities, like storing location data through GPS. Smartphones run apps that have access to location, camera, microphone, photos, contacts, emails, etc. Basically every piece of data that we own is accessible to third parties through apps. Nicholas Donkova, Director of Private Detectives at Russia PI explains that the devices we carry along all day and others we are using at home are storing all kinds of information, including biometric data. Facial and voice recognition systems are included even in the simplest phone applications, spying on every move we make.

What is the problem with that? A lot of users don’t trust big tech to do what’s right with personal data. People use their services as a necessity because it is hard to live and work nowadays if you are offline. Companies like Facebook and Google (and many others) lie about their handling of your personal data and their surveillance methods, and there seems to be no way to stop them.

The unease that people feel was intensified recently with the controversy over Facebook’s poor handling of personal data -which has been going on for long- and a new investigation that lead to discovering that Google tracks users’ locations even when they have explicitly asked the company not to track it. What is the point of having privacy settings if companies do not respect users’ desires?

Governments around the world have had to catch up with privacy regulations, but most of the damage is already done. Orwell’s 1984 is no longer science fiction but becoming reality.  Years of privacy missteps have turned these companies into powerful giants. Every time big tech is faced with authorities the only thing users get are empty promises to better protect their personal data. Who can really guarantee that the changes have been done, that another breach won’t happen again?

Big tech companies’ stocks have collapsed after the controversy due to a massive decrease in users and losing the trust of their business partners. But this will soon be forgotten as they use their power to buy government protection.   It is hard to imagine that the business model will change when it is known that the people in charge do not really care about privacy. It is more likely to think that they will boost their security measures to continue hiding what they’ve been up to.

Startups that are developing their standards and practices may be the best option for all of those concerned about their privacy. Russian investigators recommend to research and try some of the alternative services for online searches. Emerging companies like the search engine DuckDuckGo are basing their service on a unique principle: respecting people’s privacy.

C. Wright
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