Another version of surveillance is consumer data collection.
Consumer data collection
often occurs on cell phones and other devices such as laptops and tablets. Mostly everyone uses
social media on their cell phones. When people sign up, they often enter information such as
their name, where they’re from, their phone number, email, and more. These big companies,
which are not only social media companies, take this data, and sell it to third-party companies.
These companies even know that the data they are collecting is unethical. Most consumers do not
even realize that their data gets collected, and even if they do, they do not realize how it gets
used. Companies have gotten so out of hand with collecting data that legislation has gotten
involved with consumer data collection. CMSWire tells readers, “Jon Morgan, CEO at
VentureSmarter, an LLC business consultancy, told CMSWire that privacy legislation, such as
the GDPR and the CCPA, have ushered in a new era of accountability for companies collecting
and using consumer data. ‘These regulations require businesses to obtain explicit consent from
users before collecting their data and to provide options for opting out of data collection…” This
data gets thrown around the internet, and can create a whirlwind of issues. One example is
vulnerability to scammers. Scammers often purchase data from the internet to find people to
attempt scams on. PIRG reads, “You and your loved one’s data can end up in the hands of
scammers looking to identify ideal victims. Scammers can use data like your web searches or
health info to find people with dementia in order to target them with mail scams promising fake
lottery winnings in exchange for a processing fee. In another example, a precious metals scam
used highly targeted Facebook ads to get seniors to spend their retirement savings on grossly
overpriced gold and silver coins.” Scammers also tend to increase the volume of robocalls to
your cell phone. Another issue that arises is invasive targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is
the act of collecting the data of a consumer to tailor their advertising experience with things they
have recently looked at or searched for on the internet. Targeted advertising often leaves
consumers with a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to doing things such as shopping on the
internet. According to Clark, “Nicky Watson, founder and data privacy expert of Cassie, a
consumer consent and preference management solution provider, told CMSWire that targeted
advertising historically relied heavily on third-party cookies, tracking user behavior across the
web to build detailed profiles. ‘This allowed advertisers to deliver highly personalized ads,’ said
Watson. These are the practices that many consumers found annoying at best, and creepy at
worst. Consumers would visit a website to look at dog beds, for instance, only to have ads for
dog beds displayed on various sites that they visited later. Watson said that this approach has
faced growing privacy concerns and regulatory scrutiny, leading to the development of
alternative practices.”