The European Union is enacting a new policy concerning the way companies treat the personal information of their customers. Today I went through the training to make sure I understood what those rules meant to me.
Spoiler: nothing new. But there are a lot of other companies in this neighborhood that are probably scrambling. I’ll name names later.
The new privacy training was pretty much exactly the same as the previous data privacy training I have gone through, with the exception that there is a new report to fill out to make the decision process on using customer data visible to the outside world. There is also a new portal so people can see all the data my employer has collected on them, and request that that data be deleted.
But overall, the new privacy regulations in Europe might have been written by my company, they match our existing policy so closely.
Remember back when Google was “accidentally” collecting information about open home WiFi networks? Accidentally in this case means accidentally creating database tables and queries to store that information. I mean hey, accidents happen. That was a while ago, but that shit is really not going to fly now.
Hey! So much for “later”. I’m naming names.
The regulations go something like this:
- You have to spell out what you will be using the data for BEFORE you collect it.
- You have to protect that data.
- You have to let people see the data and tell you to delete it.
The Google thing was years ago. (There are plenty of current investigations, however.) But hey, remember last week when an Android user discovered Facebook was recording the recipient and duration of all his phone calls? Yeah, the beat goes on. In the aftermath of that I downloaded my own information and there were only a couple of surprises, none shocking. Hint: I don’t use Android.
At Google they must HATE Facebook for being so damn sloppy and leaking data all over the place, rather than just efficiently selling it. Regulators are swarming! Maybe now Google might consider putting in place basic security measures to prevent apps from rooting through shit that is none of their business.
My Facebook information was mostly unsurprising, but I suppose it’s possible that in the last few days Facebook has decided that fraudulently withholding some of the data they have collected on me is better than confessing to all of their shenanigans. Ironically, the ability for people to download their information was probably implemented by Facebook to comply with the new regulations. Sadly for them, the more people who download their personal info, the more trouble will arise for Facebook.
I encourage everyone to request a data download from Facebook. And from Apple, and from Google, and from Amazon. Probably Ebay, too, and the list goes on.
For the rest of this episode, I am full-on partisan. Just so you know. But there’s nothing I’m going to say that is not easily documented.
Google has a vast amount of data on you. If you use Google Wallet, downloading your data might be downright scary; if you use ApplePay instead you will find a big empty nothin’ concerning your spending habits. Apple built it so that it was not possible for them to learn anything about you from your spending. It was not easy to do.
I work for Apple. I am proud that my company puts privacy over profit — that HomeKit is slow to be adopted because it protects privacy and home-gadget manufacturers want to profit from personal data (and the hacking-resistance of HomeKit is more expensive to implement — something I’m also fine with), and I am proud that ApplePay was first out of the gate but isn’t growing as fast as the competitors because privacy requirements make it harder for banks to join in. Apple is losing money protecting privacy.
Unless protecting privacy becomes law. Then, suddenly, my employer is in the catbird seat, having built its information structure around privacy from the get-go. Apple has put a lot of systems in place to make sure they cannot collect large categories of personal data. Currently that data is an asset that they are failing to exploit. In the future, that data will be an onerous responsibility for any company that holds it. I hope so, anyway.
