Are We Taking Data Privacy Seriously?
With the update of WhatsApp data sharing with Facebook back in January, millions have transferred over to alternative platforms such as…
With the update of WhatsApp data sharing with Facebook back in January, millions have transferred over to alternative platforms such as Signal and Telegram under the fear of having their private chats and conversations exposed. However, it is known that WhatsApp has already been sharing certain information such as our phone numbers with Facebook since 2016. So what is the recent update from WhatsApp all about? Before we dive deeper into the details of the update, first we need to understand what is data privacy and why it is so important.
What is data privacy?
Data privacy, or information privacy, is “an area of data protection that concerns the proper handling of sensitive data personal data other confidential data, such as data about financial and intellectual property , to meet regulatory requirements as well as protecting the confidentiality and immutability of the data” according to Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). That simply refers to the protection of one’s information that has been collected by any specific organisation.
Especially when we sign up for accounts online like Gmail, there would always be a clause that entails the privacy policy of any data collected from the user. In truth, many of us tend to skip the entire privacy policy document whenever we subscribe to an account, and instantly tick the box beside it. Why? Because most of the time these documents are long, hard to understand and in essence a “waste of time ”. This thus generates a question, why do we create a document specific for data policy if the users will most likely ignore it anyway?
Simple. Companies need to do so by law. According to the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 and its subsequent subsidiary legislation, all companies are required to receive consent from users on how they would handle, process, store and share users’ data. It also serves as a form of transparency towards users to increase brand trust among customers.
Updates from WhatsApp
According to the FAQs from WhatsApp, they clarified that “the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way”. WhatsApp continues to emphasize that “this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data”.
This update means that whenever you choose to message a business on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is collecting data on what kind of businesses you are more interested in and would share this particular data with Facebook to show ads that reflect your preferences. Business can also extract information from conversations with customers to be used for marketing purposes.
This isn’t all too surprising as the influx in digital communication between businesses and customers has allowed for ease in the collection of customer data. These data are invaluable to businesses as it would help them to understand their target audience better and form better marketing strategies to promote the brand.
How can we ensure our data isn’t compromised?
Source: Syncsite
1. Regulate the data you have on your account profiles
When filling up fields to make a new account, you would realise that there are at times fields that are compulsory and optional. Selectively filling up details would help to regulate what you would want the organisation to know. There are also options for data to be selectively viewed by only yourself or by the public.
2. Don’t ever use public Wi-Fi
By using public Wi-Fi to access your accounts, it increases the risk for hackers to access your data. Viruses are likely to be laid out on networks due to the lack of security. Personal information such as username, passwords and bank account numbers can be easily accessed so don’t be fooled by the “free-of-charge” tag.
3. Read through your Privacy Policy
Yes, as tedious as it is, we should take these documents seriously. Having a glance through what we are consenting to would help us to have a better understanding of how an organisation plans to use our data. This would then help us to decide whether it is worth disclosing our personal information to the organisation.
Source: Pew Research Center
As the use of technology becomes more rooted within our society, it is paramount that we stay aware of how we can better take care of our data that we decide to put online. By taking our initiatives in regulating the exposure of our data, we would play a significant role in protecting our data from being compromised. After all, it takes two to waltz; if we don’t provide others with the chance to compromise our data, our data will remain protected.
[Written by: Evelyn Chen]