Missing Link

If there’s one thing almost all of us take for granted, it’s privacy.   We seem to operate in this mode of denial – wanting desperately to believe that we have privacy in what we do,  how we do it, how and where we spend our money, etc.  Every day more and more of our information goes online, into vast databases because the online world offers us convenience – it makes our lives a little easier.   I know and have heard from numerous people who have said “I never carry cash anymore… plastic is just more convenient”.

Convenient – yes.  Private – no.

What most people, in the United States anyways, don’t seem to realize is that we do NOT own the personal and private data that is collected about us.   The companies that collect the data own it.  What’s perhaps more disturbing is that there is nothing that forces them to let you even SEE what data they’ve collected, much less anything with which you can use to compel them to destroy it.  In fact, most of these companies have little reason to destroy it, and significant reason not to.

The US Government, rather than create regulations and laws to protect it’s citizens and their privacy,  has given in to industry pressure to leave things alone.   “We’ll self regulate ourselves!” exclaim the industry players,  trying to assure the government that no oversight is needed,  that they know how best to handle the average citizens personal details.

Look at the big three credit bureaus – they collect all sorts of information about you from what you spend your money on to when you make your payments on any number of accounts.  They pull in vast amounts of information about you and – in most cases – make it very difficult to SEE what data is collected, much less actually dispute it.  There are limited government regulations around this,  mainly requiring that the consumer is eligible to receive a free credit report once a year.  Beyond that – these companies are free to data mine your information for whatever purpose they see fit, and also to sell your information to anybody they want.   You see – we have no control over that.   We don’t own the data (even though it’s data about US) – they do.   And every time we use plastic to pay,   or get a new mortgage,  or take out a loan,   they get all of that information.

If you think that’s scary, look at all the kids today who are putting their information into Facebook.   I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else (as evidenced by the fact that some of you are undoubtedly reading this ON facebook, where it’s syndicated.  As an aside – you really should read this stuff on my blog itself for better formatting).  People wonder why Facebook is valued at billions of dollars when it has not really made any money?   It’s not the revenue stream that’s worth that much money, I can tell you that much.   It’s the DATA!   With Millions of people putting all sorts of juicy details about themselves into the site, we’re giving Facebook all sorts of details into our lives – data that can be mined and made useful. Before you go rush off to delete the information you’ve put into the site (or try marking your profile to make it “private”) you should know that – even data you delete from your profile, is still stored in their databases. It’s just not shown on your profile anymore.  There’s no reason for them to delete the data, after all.  The same thing goes for Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

I won’t go so far as to say Privacy is dead.  It’s not.  Not yet, anyways.

I also will point out that SOME data remains mostly private.   Sort of.   Like health information.

Health information is private in the sense that it is protected (HIPAA), and there are strict laws around what can and can not be shared (anything considered protected health information, or PHI, is protected).  I spent the better part of a year building an information security program around this kind of data for a medicare contractor.  There are very detailed laws around it, and environments where this is stored are under fairly high scrutiny from the government. Having said all that – your data is still handled by numerous people as it works it’s way through the system.  All of these people are subject to seeing your data – in a ’secure’ fashion – while doing their jobs.

Sadly, in the information age – where vast amounts of our personal data are increasingly finding their way into networked databases – our privacy is dwindling, even if we do not perceive this to be the case. We won’t realize our privacy is gone until well after the last of our privacy disappears.