Casting a light on tech’s murky misuse of our data

As the ongoing and evolving global pandemic has intensified our reliance on technology, it has catalysed the latest wave of questionable data privacy standards and in doing so renewed the scrutiny placed on our personal data, who’s accessing it, and why. Whether it’s concerns over the security of the latest social media craze TikTok, the widespread and confounding hack of prominent Twitter profiles, or even the alleged involvement of the Chinese Government in a recent cyber security attack on Australia, heavyweight tech corporations are turning into surveillance companies.

These examples form just the tip of a troubling iceberg that sees big businesses, today, value the collection of personal data above all else. Societally, we’re starting to understand that our online habits are being tracked, and that our data is sold to advertisers, businesses and even political lobbying groups who exploit it for their benefit. Catalysed by a stream of high-profile privacy breaches involving the world’s most powerful companies, our trust in tech is falling as our awareness of the scale of data misuse rises. For anyone who, like me, values personal privacy – one of our most basic rights – this is concerning.

By many estimates, data has surpassed oil in value. For online businesses who thrive by accessing and exploiting consumers‘ information, it’s gold dust. Businesses seek, and pay a lot more, to target customers with specific traits and interests. Surreptitious software relentlessly monitors a user’s actions, clicks and conversations with the sole purpose of uncovering personal habits and interests so it can sell the information it gleans to businesses eager to capitalise. It’s a secretive, shady process that will have only increased during the ongoing pandemic as our online dependence – and, therefore, the amount of our personal data it store – has increased.

It’s worth understanding, however, that there’s a subtle difference between that and software which improves functionality as it understands a user. Take spellchecker, for example; the primary purpose of which is to uncover errors and improve the quality of written text. The difference is the existence of an understanding, on the part of the user, that all the information accessed by the software is for this explicit purpose. There is no such understanding if the same user then accesses Google or Facebook, and later finds they’re being targeted by other businesses, without ever having given their permission. This is the monetisation of their personal data – an asset that, really, has a far greater, unquantifiable value.

However, there is another, less publicised way that people‘s private data is being misused, and it involves partnerships between technology companies and software vendors. The majority of software vendors monitor customers, users, and prospective customers through cookies; small files deployed by a website to follow and understand a visitor. Software companies pay significant amounts for advertising online and want to know whether their investment is translating into leads and increased traffic.

These companies rely on free services such as analytics, tag management or usage stats provided by big tech companies and, in return, pay by exposing their user data. As the saying goes: ‘If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product’. So, unbeknown to these users, SaaS vendors run trackers and share the information they can glean with third-party ‘surveillance’ companies. It’s a very real, but unacknowledged, quid-pro-quo.

When a popular CRM vendor, for example, uses Google, Adobe, and Twitter analytics on their homepage and an employee of a company is using that CRM, or even when a non-customer visits it‘s homepage, their information is being handed over.

In an era when significant online breaches are becoming commonplace, the potential for a data leak is increased exponentially – all without the customer, user, or visitor knowing about it. It‘s one thing to track the personal online activity of a user – it’s entirely different, however, to deal in the personal data of an unsuspecting employee who is using a service or software as a core function of their job.

Consumers flock to big tech surveillance companies because their services are often free – knowing to varying extents that they are paying with their data. Businesses, however, use these and other surveillance companies‘ services because they’re mostly free and require minimal work. In this case, businesses are paying with user data often without informing the user. That’s something else entirely.

So at Zoho, we disagree when we hear suggestions that data has surpassed oil in value. That’s because, when it comes to your data – your most prized and personal asset – it’s not for sale, so you can’t quantify its value. It’s priceless, and that’s why guarding it is our greatest responsibility. Some things can be monetised; data is not one of them. So we‘ve removed all third party cookies from our sites as it strengthens our user privacy procedures and policies. We want people to feel comfortable that they’re not being compromised when they visit our site. For us, there’s more value in adhering to higher values.

As consumers and employees feel empowered to safeguard their personal data and shun the ‘surveillance’ companies who seek to misuse it, businesses must take action. If not, the consequences can be severe. At a time when our reliance on technology has never been greater, our trust, sadly, has never been lower. As our reliance on tech for so many personal and professional functions increases in the wake of an ongoing pandemic, the industry must do better. As a society, as an industry, and as individual businesses, it’s time to be open, honest and do more to safeguard data and privacy. After all, the dystopian alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Vijay Sundaram is Zoho’s Chief Strategy Officer