PRIVACY IN ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS
In my main area of research I examine the potential conflict between the demand by companies for personal data and the desire of individuals to seek protection for this personal data.
Privacy "is a highly complex, difficult subject that affects every person. To treat it as any less complicated or any less important threatens the convenience, service, recognition, and opportunity that consumers enjoy as the result of information sharing, as well as the information infrastructure that undergirds our economy and our democracy" (Cate 2001, p. 67)
Photo: "Family Shadow on the Beach" by Andrew®. Some rights reserved. Flickr.
Consumer profiling & loss of privacy
The research is related to the concern regarding loss of privacy, which has been identified as “a huge and unresolved issue on the Internet” (Tapscott 2009, p. 295) and “perhaps the most obvious shadow side of technological cooperation systems” (Rheingold 2002, p. xxi). This suggests that the convergence of technological and social networks demands further discussion of how personal data is managed and, ultimately, controlled and by who.
I am currently investigating the potential for a profiling system managed by individual consumers with a view to allowing role-specific privacy. This challenges the accepted notion of organisations being the sole managers of data about individuals.
Profiling managed by consumers
The research begins from the hypothetical position of individual consumers being able to manage and distribute their own data. The research investigates benefits and concerns raised by respondents, resulting in the introduction of a consumer-managed profiling system that could overcome the conflict between the need for consumers to participate in contemporary societies and their desire to seek protection from the unnecessary collection of their personal data.
In the future, this conflict may become a major obstacle to organizations wanting to benefit from social trends such as “crowdsourcing” (e.g. Howe 2009) or the effective co-creation of value with consumers.
Implications for social network services
This project is timely in that it proposes ways for social network services to develop solutions that overcome these obstacles and allow them to engage with customers to investigate the feasibility for a consumer-managed profiling system.
Social Media Links