Thursday, May 18, 2017

Your Aggregated Consumer Data May Not Be Secure

An article on AdAge (http://adage.com/article/privacy-and-regulation/aggregating-data-guard-privacy-vc-s/309068/) brings attention to the challenge of the privacy of individuals, when aggregation data is shared on browsing history or online preferences.

Thusfar, companies that have provided data in aggregate to third-parties have argued that stripping out personal data such as names and addresses would make it impossible for someone's individual data or private browsing history to be individually pinpointed. However, this article makes the point that since short journeys in browsing are made repeatedly by the same user, it actually is possible to figure out someone's specific browsing history from large amounts of data.

While the technical aspect is confusing to me, it does worry me that individual browsing history can be detected, as I think this could lead to wrongdoing in the digital marketing space, and even worse if the data fell into the wrong hands. Reading this article made me think of the importance of cybersecurity in the marketing space, and the need for some regulations on how internet data is used. 

No comments: