Is privacy dead?

How 16 years of Web commerce has utterly transformed what privacy means in the 21st centaury

© 2010 Shivercube

The Web

Connects humanity Free information Unlimited information It’s open Allows infinite opportunities Makes us immortal

© 2010 Shivercube

The Web Is Free

Nonmonetary Market

Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Chris Anderson

© 2010 Shivercube

Or Is It?

The Three-Party Market

Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Chris Anderson

© 2010 Shivercube

They’re Watching

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/03/10/technology/20080310_PRIVACY_GRAPHIC.html

© 2010 Shivercube

Information – The New Currency

The product online is not the content, it’s you The digital fingerprint More valuable than gold

Pay with privacy, not money Thoughts and actions are tracked

and traded Consumers are now commodities How much would you charge for

someone to read your personal diary?

© 2010 Shivercube

Multiple Identities

Who does the cookie say you are? Are you the same person online as

you are in real life? Computers don’t understand context We ask search engines questions

that we would never even consider asking another human being

© 2010 Shivercube

Free Is Good

We all want something for nothing Most Web use is free You pay less, receive more

Have more money to spend on other things

Improves general wealth Free makes us happy

© 2010 Shivercube

The Side Effects

Digital information is valuable, but can’t be returned

Will you feel the same way about what you did last night, not just the next morning, but also 40 years later? Data collected today can have unintended

consequences later We have to all live like celebrities

Once it’s there, it’s there for good

© 2010 Shivercube

More Side Effects

Who really owns all that information? What if the company gets sold Do you really trust them?

In exchange for a free Web, our privacy has become a commodity

The Web isn’t a closed private bubble It’s all public We’re having conversations with computers

across the world We are all being watched

© 2010 Shivercube

But It’s Beneficial

Each individual treated uniquely Personalised experiences

The Web isn’t a broadcasting mechanism It’s a narrowcasting mechanism

It’s good as long as it’s free! There’s a risk-reward ratio

Reward outweighs the risk Convenience triumphs

© 2010 Shivercube

Recommendation Engines

Personalised experience Gives an advantage over traditional

shops Amazon tells you what you might like

to buy Netflix tells you what movies you

might like

“Recommendation engines are very good at figuring out what people like me would do and telling me what that is. So I can then find out what people like me do. I can become much more like a person like me… Recommendation engines, by telling me what people like me do, and encouraging me to be like a person like me, they help me to become more prototypically one of my kind of person. And the more like one of my kind of person I become, the less me I am, and the more I am a demographic type.” – Douglas Rushkoff

© 2010 Shivercube

How Did Privacy Die?

Web created by scientists who wanted to share information

Web and money did not go together Commerce originally outlawed Then came Amazon

Then ecommerce revolution began Then came Google

Then the advertisement revolution began

© 2010 Shivercube

Google

An advertising company One of the biggest money-making

machines in history One of the most powerful companies in

the world And they did it all by giving away things

for free

© 2010 Shivercube

Google – The Good Side

True to the nature of the Web Everything is free

Gives information at your fingertips Adwords serves a single ad to a single

person Every time Tries to make ads relevant to the content

If you don’t like them, you don’t have to click them They still make money and give you free

services

© 2010 Shivercube

Google – Monetisation

$200 per second in 2009 $6.5 billion in profit for the year

They’re going to make money out of you eventually You’re eventually going to view an ad Or click an ad

Very targeted ad serving Beginnings of a monopoly over

advertisinghttp://www.penn-olson.com/2010/01/22/money-googles-2009-net-profit-rose-by-50/

© 2010 Shivercube

Google Gmail

Reads your email Analyses it Places ads in the sidebar, based on

email content It’s free, but they’re listening Has it gone too far?

© 2010 Shivercube

Is It Harmless?

numb fingers 60 single men dog that urinates on everything how to kill oneself by natural gas fear that spouse contemplating

cheating depression and medical leave

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?_r=1

© 2010 Shivercube

De-identified Can Be Identified

In 2006, AOL released a file Contained searches over the last 3

months Users only identified by a numerical

code But information is so personal User 4417749

Thelma Arnold 62 year old woman

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?_r=1

© 2010 Shivercube

Facebook

Willingly give away personal information

Facebook Connect Tracks websites Gives third parties access to personal

information Special partners automatically get

access Yelp Rotten Tomatoes

© 2010 Shivercube

Behavioural Targeting

Track where you’ve been Determine what you like Track what types of things you’ve

been buying Predict what you’re likely to buy in

the future Very valuable to advertisers

© 2010 Shivercube

Behavioural Targeting – Example

© 2010 Shivercube

Evercookie

Virtually irrevocable persistent cookies

Uses several storage mechanisms Recreates itself whenever deleted A browser exploit

Likely to be fixed in the future http://samy.pl/evercookie/

© 2010 Shivercube

If Privacy Is Dead…

The Web has to stay open Innovation has to continue The longer we’re online, the more

attention we pay The more information a business can

capture The more ads they can sell

It could be a good thing Personal information makes our

experiences better

© 2010 Shivercube

What Do You Think?