The "war" between big data and personal privacy has begun

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has recently become an Internet sensation, with users changing their avatars to pictures of him.

It's not idolatry, it's actually a protest against Google's new ads. Google's recent so-called "**** the same endorsement" advertising policy will allow advertisers to use the names, photos, reviews and other information about Google users on the Google+ social networking site, as well as other Google services, in order to endorse their own advertised products. The move has been criticized as an invasion of personal privacy and has sparked extreme discontent among many users.

Google is only momentarily in the "wind and waves". Behind this, in fact, is an unavoidable big data and personal privacy between the "war".

Google's new ads are an embarrassment

Google's new ad policy is called "**** the same endorsement", what's going on?

For example, if you use Google to search for a restaurant, your friends "Zhang so-and-so," "Li so-and-so" and so on may appear on the web page after they have eaten at the restaurant and then clicked "like" or made other comments. "or make other comments, and" Zhang so-and-so "and" Li so-and-so "are real names, their avatars are also clearly visible. Then, you will feel twice as good about the restaurant, and you may also make some consumption choices in accordance with your friends' comments. In this way, "Zhang so-and-so" and "Li so-and-so" have invariably advertised for the restaurant and become its spokespersons, and one day they may even get a share of the advertising money.

If you were "Zhang so-and-so" or "Li so-and-so," would you really want to do such an advertisement, exposing yourself to others? Even if the target of the advertisement is your own friend, you may not be willing to share it unconditionally every time. What's more, you may not even remember where you've left your "visit here" in the past, so God knows where this kind of advertisement will appear and who will see it.

However, Google has also explained that the choice of whether or not to participate in **** endorsements is actually up to the user. It's just that if users don't change their ****enjoyment approval settings, they're tacitly allowing Google to use all kinds of information about them in ads.

Even so, this new Google advertising policy has been challenged as an "invasion of user privacy". Mark Rotberg, head of the U.S. Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), also accused Google's new ads of unfairly commoditizing information such as photos of Web users. He also called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene in the investigation and evaluation. Google users have even protested, according to foreign media reports, in a short period of time, many Google + users have replaced their profile photos with Schmidt's photo, once Google decided to use the user's photo in the ads, these photos show will be Schmidt himself.

Questioning or protesting, Google hasn't changed its mind, at least for now, and won't change its new advertising policy. That's because, in Google's view, its rival, Facebook, has long adopted a similar social advertising strategy. Google's move is meant to meet it head on.

It's true that this kind of advertising is not new to Web users in China. Sina Weibo inserts ad-like entries such as "friends listening," "friends following," and "location recommendations" into the user's homepage stream, and displays the user's friend's ID below the entry, treating the user as an advertiser. The user's friends' IDs are also displayed underneath the entries, making the user a spokesperson for the ads.

The delivery of this information, intentionally or unintentionally, threatens users' privacy. Some big Internet companies, such as Google, can still explain the terms and conditions to their users, and it's possible to find out if they're involved in the "****ing endorsement," or if they're even generous enough to give participating users benefits based on their share of the advertising revenue. However, as long as the big companies set a precedent, there will inevitably be some irregular, or even unscrupulous sites to follow, without my consent to unauthorized use of your avatar or other information to advertise, then your privacy is completely exposed, but also some of you do not know the channel, what will affect you, but there is no way to know.

If Google's new advertising policy is to bring user information directly to its own use, violating the user's privacy; then, in the current era of big data, almost all online business behavior, in essence, is through the insight or use of the user's personal privacy, to obtain commercial revenue.

Everyone of us can be known by the service provider for everything we do on the web. When we browse a web page, send a tweet, visit a social networking site, or do online shopping, all of our actions are actually recorded by the network system in the form of data. Based on the comprehensive analysis of these data, Google can clearly grasp your web browsing habits, while Amazon, Taobao and other e-commerce companies can understand your shopping habits, Face-book, Weibo, WeChat and so on, it seems to know everything, including your social network. On top of that, there's web mapping and location, which are more than capable of monitoring your whereabouts in real time.

All of this "you" information, which was originally private, has now become "inventory" data for Internet merchants. They can use it at any time to identify "you" and mine you for commercial value. Google's new advertising approach is just one of many ways in which businesses are using big data for so-called precision marketing, which is a more common form of privacy utilization.

For example, if you happen to mention a certain product or service on a social networking site, that type of product or service can find you on its own accord; and if you want to buy a pair of snow boots online, and you've browsed for that type of product on a certain e-commerce site, then links to related snow boots introductions or purchases will continue to be recommended to you for some time to come; and if, for example, you've searched for a certain restaurant's address just by using a web map, you may be able to find it by searching for it. For example, if you've just searched for a restaurant through a web map, you may not even want to go there, but information about the restaurant or its promotions will be pushed to you on a regular basis, which will naturally include endorsements from your good friends as part of Google's new ads.

These practices may seem like a way to reach out to consumers, but they're not an invasion of their privacy. "In the age of big data, there's hardly any privacy to speak of" is an understatement. Who you are, where you are, your preferences, your consumption habits, what you want to do at the moment ...... big data can give accurate or nearly accurate answers. For Internet companies, based on big data resources to master more user privacy, in order to quickly occupy more market share. Even industry insiders will be the next round of Internet competition, bluntly defined as "privacy war", the user's privacy is the core competitiveness.

For example, Acxiom, the world's leading IT and data services company, has a strong presence in the industry because it has a large amount of data about personal privacy, and it is said to have personal information on more than 5 million consumers around the world. Acxiom can use this information to surmise your lifestyle, hobbies and daily activities, such as the brand of your car and how long you've been using it, your income and investment status, your age, and your level of education. In addition, have you recently been divorced, or have you just become an empty nester? These "life events" can move a person from one consumer class to another, and are of key interest to Acxiom and its advertisers. Acxiom says it can analyze the data to predict 3,000 different behaviors and psychological tendencies, such as how a person would choose between two brands.

Acxiom is ahead of the curve. But compared to Acxiom's raw data, which originated from certain questionnaires or user registration services, it took a lot of time to accumulate. Today, some Internet companies, such as Facebook, are rapidly expanding their data accumulation, with Facebook saying it can automate and automate the collection of personal information in real time. Financial filings from the company's initial public offering show that the amount of picture and video data per user on Facebook was about 111MB, and with more than 1 billion users today, that's a full 100PB (1PB=10,242GB) of personal data.

What's more, it's worth noting that there's a trend toward integrating online and offline merchants, and once they start working together to integrate and ****take advantage of big data, there's really no place for users' privacy to hide. As early as February this year, Facebook has announced cooperation with a number of data agents, including Acxiom, through the integration of their respective data resources to structure the link between the real world and the virtual network. A month later, Acxiom's chief science officer announced that their data had been linked to 90% of all social profiles in the United States.

Rejecting the malicious use of personal privacy

Big data is a "double-edged sword", fast network, accurate marketing, although it can bring people a more convenient way of life, but also make the protection of personal privacy has almost become a pseudo-proposition.

Today's big data marketing, for consumers, is like being stared at by a pair of eyes, prying into your every move every moment. In the era of PC terminals, this pair of eyes may only be able to spy on your Internet tracks, when you subscribe to a certain online service, by the way to send some promotional emails. In the current era of big data in the mobile Internet, this pair of eyes to spy on you, has been able to do real-time tracking, ate what meals, met with what people, where to consume what ...... then there will be allegedly suitable for you a variety of services or goods advertisements all over the world.

Not to mention, the feeling of being monitored all the time can sometimes make people feel insecure. In many cases, even the so-called "precision marketing" that businesses use to "understand consumers better" doesn't always surprise consumers. A netizen complained that he once just out of curiosity, itchy hands on Taobao search "coffin" two words, the next day, he was surrounded by a variety of funeral-related products to promote information. Not only on Taobao, since Alibaba and Sina Weibo cooperation, the netizen a few times to open Sina Weibo, the side of the commodity promotion are all funeral products marketing, "sometimes suddenly 'jumped' out, but also really creepy people.

This seems to be the norm for consumers. But these various situations, but also based on big data, excessive marketing, so that consumers are disgusted, perhaps not yet reached the degree of "malicious". Then, the hotel leaked consumer room information, hundreds of thousands of insurance policy information was leaked, courier orders were sold on the day of delivery, this is a shocking news, are not pointing to the mining of consumer data under the madness of commercial profit-seeking behavior. These businesses are not only maliciously using private data, but also seriously violating consumers' personal privacy.

The "war" between big data and personal privacy has begun.

But as individual consumers, we have long been unable to avoid having our personal privacy memorized by online systems and mastered and mined for use by businesses. Even in the PC era, some users will take measures to clear cookies constantly when surfing the Internet to avoid their privacy being compromised, but in fact many background software can still access your Internet history. This is especially true of anti-virus software, which essentially protects your privacy in some sense, but can also get a fuller picture of your private data. What's more, in an era of big data based on the mobile Internet, through the positioning of mobile devices, tracking, for example, you bring a cell phone, the network backend system through the sensor can know where you are, at the same time, all kinds of data cross, correlation, as well as based on the comprehensive analysis of global data, no matter when, the backend are able to clearly "know" each person.

Industry insiders frankly admitted that the era of big data, to protect personal privacy, so that the user's individual privacy is not leaked, it is technically difficult to do.

The only measure we can and must take is to keep these users' personal privacy from being used maliciously by unscrupulous businesses and illegal organizations. On the one hand, this requires the government and industry regulators to step up their supervision, but any businessmen who are found to be maliciously using users' privacy and causing harm to them should be severely punished. On the other hand, Jiang Qiping, secretary general of the Informatization Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has frankly said that, as far as the domestic situation is concerned, in addition to the regulatory challenges posed by technology, the lagging legislation also puts the regulation in a state of inability to comply with the law, "Although there are relevant laws, they are all very sketchy, and the Internet companies know that even if it violates the privacy of the users, the law can't do anything about it. "Therefore, it is necessary to establish and improve the laws and regulations and basic rules of personal privacy protection.

In fact, not only China, but all countries are facing the same dilemma. Countries are also taking active measures to address laws and regulations for privacy protection in the era of big data. In 2012, the Obama administration unveiled the Privacy Bill of Rights, which calls on companies to give users more control over the use of their private information. The European Union has also proposed a bill on the "right to be forgotten," which would give consumers the right to ask companies to erase their personal data, among other things.

Besides that, technology is still a condition that cannot be ignored when it comes to protecting personal privacy. Although the existing technical means are far from adequate for protecting personal privacy, we still need to actively encourage the research and development, innovation and use of privacy protection technology. We hope that one day in the future, we will be able to realize from the technical level to protect privacy security in the era of big data and improve the user protection system.

The above is what I shared with you about the "war" between big data and personal privacy, and more information can be found on Global Ivy to share more dry goods