What about your privacy?

Written by, Tom

We can’t deny that we have to rethink the way we protect our privacy. There was a time when online applications could only be used by the cleverest minds on the planet. Now every nitwit can create a Facebook account and share his life with the world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that these things are easier to use, I’m having trouble enough installing a new MSN Messenger, I don’t know what I would do when it gets more complicated.

I just find it hard to determine who should be responsible here? Companies like Facebook, Google,… try to earn money by collecting data from their users, it’s in their own benefit to gather as much data as possible from as much people as possible. Quantity is what counts and I bet that respecting people’s privacies isn’t on top of their ‘to do’-list, though it should. On the other hand, privacy is something we all define differently. So even if companies decide to give users the tools to protect their privacy, how are they going to do it if there’s no set of rules or guidelines? Is the user responsible for protecting his own privacy and, if it’s being mis-managed by the company, his responsibility to ask for a change?

The easiest way would be putting the responsibility with the company. They are the ones who made the applications, who wrote the lengthy privacy statement and who profit from our data. But what if they took their responsibility… would we take ours? When is the last time you read a privacy statement before you started to use the application? We usually only read it when there’s a problem. Even with news that Facebook would sell its database, do you think a lot of users would close their accounts?

So… to what extent are you protecting your privacy? Do you think it’s the responsibility of companies like Facebook, Google,… to protect our privacy or is it our own? Do you believe that if the tools were made available, that they would be properly used?

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Tom is a marketing & communications manager at Kursaal Oostende in Ostend (Belgium). He writes about marketing, management and social media on Who’s Reading Anyway? and about customer relations on Who’s Listening Anyway?