With the advent of the era of big data, the problem of privacy disclosure has gradually emerged. In particular, this year’s privacy leakage cases are emerging in endlessly, from the high-profile Case of Facebook user privacy leakage in March to the suspected theft of user data by hackers in June, it seems that we live in the era of big data there is no privacy at all.
The flood is dangerous, and privacy leakage is dangerous
A review of the privacy of Facebook users reveals that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica leaked user information. Facebook was not involved in the leak, but was also responsible for the leak. There are a number of big data companies like Facebook that know how to use big data. Many of them are privacy privacy disclosure users, and it would be very difficult to know if their privacy could fall into the wrong hands. This is by no means an exaggeration. There are several possible dangers of privacy leakage.
Hazard 1: Personal and property of users are threatened. In recent years, large and small online personal information leakage incidents occur frequently, information security issues are more prominent than any previous era. More and more citizens’ personal information has become the “sweet bobo”, which is either directly sold for illegal profits or used by criminals to engage in criminal activities such as telecom fraud, illegal debt collection or even kidnapping and extortion. Criminals collect people’s leaked privacy through various ways, screen and analyze user characteristics, and carry out precise crimes. For example, in a case released by the China Security Products Industry Association, Chen, a general ledger accountant of a listed company in Shanghai, was cloned out of the company’s wechat group by the information collected by criminals to cheat 1.69 million yuan, which is a typical case of network fraud caused by privacy leakage.
Hazard two, threat to national and company security. After all, the impact of privacy disclosure on individuals is limited, but the harm to companies and countries is huge. Criminals collect some important information from the other company through various ways and sell the information to their competitors, thus causing huge losses to the company. If the company secrets in key industries are leaked, it will not only be fatal to the company, but also pose a threat to national security. For example, in the event of information leakage of 50 million Residents in Turkey, a hacker attacked the database storing national identity information of Turkey and leaked the exported information to the public network, including erdogan’s detailed identity information of Turkey, which posed a serious threat to Turkey’s national security.
Harm three, the user thought is easy to be coerced. Although privacy disclosure poses a serious threat to the security of individuals, companies and countries, what is more terrible is that privacy disclosure can force users to think, change their three views, and eventually lead the whole society to develop in a designed direction. For example, in the famous case of Privacy disclosure of Facebook users, Cambridge Analytica used the user data obtained from Facebook to analyze users’ behavior and thinking, and delivered precise advertisements to users, adding elements affecting the presidential election into the information received by users, thus subtly influencing the thoughts of voters. To achieve the purpose of binding users’ minds, and further manipulate the US presidential election.
Harm four, damage the company image. Privacy breaches range from large to small, damaging the image of an entire industry to small. Protecting users’ privacy and preventing leakage not only reflects the integrity of the management mechanism of Internet technology companies, but also reflects the concentrated technical ability of technology companies. Therefore, once large-scale privacy leakage is caused, the company’s image will be seriously damaged. It is absurd that Uber, a Silicon Valley technology company, paid 100,000 dollars to hackers to keep quiet about the data breach, even though it did not disclose the breach to its customers. The privacy breach has sent Uber’s image into a tailspin, severely damaging the company’s image to users.
Harm five, cause social panic, affect social stability. Privacy breaches happen all the time, but if they are caused by Internet technology companies with big data in their hands, the impact could be as big as the outbreak of the plague. However, the privacy disclosure case of Facebook users has caused social panic. People’s concern about their own safety has spread to 62% of the People in the United States, and there have been numerous protests against privacy disclosure all over the country, seriously affecting social stability.
Internal and external double factors caused by privacy leakage overflow
Privacy disclosure is a great harm, but there are still a lot of users’ privacy is leaked in the hands of Internet technology companies, and the user privacy disclosure is the result of internal and external factors.
Internal factors:
Users’ awareness of privacy protection is weak. No honey does not recruit butterfly bees, users privacy disclosure with users have unclear, unclear relationship. Users will disclose their privacy by Posting some sensitive information about themselves or sharing their location on social software, or by filling in their privacy information in some so-called online questionnaires. Part of the reason for the privacy disclosure of Facebook is the weak awareness of privacy protection of users. Kogan asked users to fill in questionnaires and authorize daily data for Kogan’s research through the survey mini program on Facebook, which was the beginning of the privacy disclosure.
Facebook didn’t take adequate precautions. If it is inevitable that users’ awareness of privacy will be weak, then the protection of users’ private data by big data companies will be the last line of defense. This time, Facebook revealed that its privacy measures were inadequate, not in preventing data from being stolen by a Trojan horse, but in protecting its internal personnel, which allowed Kogan to leak data used for research to Cambridge Analytica. In this aspect, the most representative industry in China is express delivery and food delivery. As users need to carry out physical transactions and collect some key privacy information, the platform has a large number of users’ key privacy information. According to the Beijing News reporter undercover meituan food delivery user information sales group, The leakage of user information on takeout platforms is mainly caused by riders and some telemarketing companies colluding with the insiders of takeout platforms to steal privacy through illegal channels. Takeout platforms are responsible for all this, and inadequate preventive measures are the main reason for the leakage of user privacy.
External factors:
Hacker attacks and virus trojans steal. Technology companies like Facebook have a huge amount of user information in their hands. In addition to users and the company’s own mishandling of the leakage, hackers and Trojan horse theft is the number one killer of privacy leakage. Facebook’s privacy breach isn’t about hackers — it’s just an example of how sophisticated hackers can get past tech companies’ firewalls and sell or make public stolen data to show off their prowess. Last year, for example, the website of Equifax, a US credit investigation company, was hacked, and the data of 143 million US citizens were leaked to the dark web, putting one-third of us citizens at risk.
In addition, the relevant laws and regulations are not perfect, and the deterrent force against lawbreakers is not enough, which is part of the reason for the privacy disclosure of Facebook, and one of the important reasons for the frequent occurrence of privacy disclosure cases.
Internet Tech companies’ Woes: How to cure privacy leaks
In the era of big data, user privacy but also emerge in endlessly, foreign has the Internet technology giants such as Facebook, yahoo reported leak gate, and domestic privacy cases also not a few, such as the public comments by user’s whereabouts, 360 camera exposure without the consent of the user to user upload video into droplets broadcast platform, B station and fast video event, etc., All show that the Internet has become a disaster area of privacy leakage.
The growth of data has never stopped, even a spurt of growth. Huge databases and algorithms have brought great wealth to the public. As an Internet technology company with massive data every day, using data to analyze customers and dig potential customers, whether to protect user privacy, how to protect user privacy has become a heart disease for Internet technology companies.
The answer to the question of whether Internet technology companies should flout user privacy for the sake of growth is no. Users are the basis of the development of the entire Internet industry, we should not lose users for immediate interests, just the so-called “people win the world” is this principle; The law will not allow the existence of Internet technology companies that leak privacy for the sake of development. From two aspects, Internet technology companies will pay more attention to the protection of user privacy in the future. However, to truly protect users and themselves, privacy leakage can only be prevented.
First, Internet technology companies can strengthen the publicity of privacy prevention knowledge and improve users’ awareness and ability of privacy prevention. The privacy of the main disclosure or the user, like Dayu water control, blocking as sparse. Therefore, Internet technology companies can increase the popularization and publicity of privacy prevention knowledge to improve users’ awareness of privacy prevention, so as to fundamentally prevent user privacy disclosure. Specific operations can be through the user login, browsing, launching and other key steps to remind with an advertising space and popularize privacy prevention knowledge, so as to improve the awareness and ability of privacy prevention.
Second, Internet technology companies need to establish sound internal prevention measures to prevent data leakage. Although it is the most effective way to control privacy leakage from users, users’ privacy information is stored in the hands of Internet technology companies, so users’ privacy information has to rely on the company to guard it. However, there are also some borers in the company. Just like Facebook this time, the interests of internal personnel leak users’ privacy to seek profits, which requires Internet technology companies to establish a sound and perfect internal confidentiality mechanism to prevent users’ privacy or company secrets from leaking out from the inside.
Third, Internet technology companies improve data protection techniques to reduce the risk of data theft. Hackers attack Internet technology companies to steal users’ privacy is the main culprit of privacy leakage cases, and the consequences of privacy leakage caused by hackers are also the most serious. At present, the speed of network technology update is faster and faster, and the attack means of hackers are more and more sophisticated, which requires Internet technology companies to continuously improve data protection technology, to reduce the risk of data theft. Block chain technology is an effective way to prevent data theft, technically block chain technology is based on open source and distributed, privacy is also an important part of the chain block consensus, block chain community has a very strong incentive to protect privacy, the underlying consensus would ensure that block chain related applications than centralized applications more attention to protect the privacy of participants, Thus reducing the risk of data theft.
We are very lucky in the era of big data. We can fully enjoy all kinds of intimate and convenient services brought by Internet technology companies using big data, but we should also clearly see that big data also makes people’s privacy no place to hide. Therefore, while enjoying the convenience brought by technology companies, we also need to pay more attention to privacy protection and prevent privacy leakage. In addition, Internet technology companies holding big data should spare no effort to protect user privacy and form a good civil and business relationship.
Article/Liu Kuang public number, ID: Liukuang110, this article first kuang Venture capital network