Privacy allows people to maintain appropriate social boundaries in a number of ways. These can be physical, mental, sexual, spiritual or emotional and it are an important factor regulating our relationships with others and ourselves. The massive collection of data has caused a change in the dynamic of those boundaries. Now what is done in the privacy of the home is available to outside agencies. A person might be lying in bed watching videos or talking in their living room and still unknowingly be the subject of data collection.
After using Polisis to analyse the privacy policy for Samsung TV’s it appears that user choice places little control over the data they collect. This data includes,
- On-line user activities.
- Contact information.
- Survey data.
- Cookies and tracking elements.
- Social media data.
- Location.
- Financial information.
- IP Address and device IDs.
- Computer information.
- Unspecified information (where the type of information gathered isn’t specified).
Some of that information was collected for unspecified purposes and most had no specified user choice associated with it. To put it simply, a user doesn’t not what is being collected or where it is being sent.
There is no proof that Samsung is selling this information into the data market but there appears to be little to stop them, or the the third parties they allow on the service, in doing so. Even anonymous data can be matched up to other data bases in order to identify individuals and then these lists can be on-sold or used.
But how does this effect our social boundaries? Think of peoples interactions with others. Many of them are based on the other person not knowing much about them. Simple information given to the other party in this way can have a profound effect on the interaction and its outcome. When we pay our tax, apply for a benefit, rent or buy a house, apply for a job, book a hotel, or buy something else on-line we don’t expect the other party to have access to large amounts of information in order to ascertain whether we are telling the truth (in their eyes) or not or to price a product according to our status instead of having a fair playing field.
