Shopping on the internet is a breeze today. When I browse through the online stores, I will always receive recommendations on an item that I’m interested in. Adverts that pop up also seem to be related to my research on my next purchase. It looks like I’m being tracked.
This was a phenomenon that I noticed after moving to America. In Singapore, I didn’t do much online shopping as it was easy for me to head to the store and buy the items I needed. In America though, I have no choice. The best deals are on the internet. Shipping takes only 2 days, and the things I want sometimes cannot be found at the location I’m at. It turns out that the more I shopped, the more data I was generating for data mining companies.
In Reyman’s (2013) article, she mentioned that the generation, collection and use of user data occur on many levels on the social and participatory Web. Basically, whatever I do on the internet leaves a data trail only to enable user tracking. My generation of data and the collection of it by data mining companies occur with a lack of transparency. For example, Amazon doesn’t tell me when I purchase an item that it will be stored as part of my profile, aggregated against my purchase history and then used for marketing purposes.
So how can we protect ourselves from the appropriation of user data? As Jennifer Golbeck proposes in her keynote speech below, she suggests that instead of going through the policy route where social media companies are governed by law, a mechanism could be developed that prompts the user on the risks associated with generating data. For example, before I share an article, like a page or make a purchase, a prompt will read “here’s the risk (in brief description) of the action you just took”. This might affect whether I would want to execute that action. As Reyman (2013) suggests, it is all about balancing user data rights.
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