At this point users of facebook and google are no strangers to the fact that both of these mega companies often do ethical acrobatics with our data and apparently even our minds. recently the tool technology giants have been accused of employing what experts call “dark patterns”, Including confounding interfaces and misleading terminology. These practices have apparently been used to persuade consumers to what extent in privacy options but where unfavorable to the individual but favoured corporate interests.
From the looks of it facebook and google do not intend to give users a choice but rather have users make ill informed decisions pertaining to their privacy. The Norwegian consumer council has gone so far as to say that the use of these patterns is in fact a violation of europe's general data protection regulation GDPR. By using these practices they have been able to manipulate users into sharing information unwittingly.
Although it is simple actions like providing misleading default settings that obscure privacy intrusive policies, or hiding the privacy friendly choices by making them harder to access or even find. Oftentimes users who declined to choose specific settings found their accounts deleted on these platforms.
One of the most obvious issues can be found in default settings which often favour the companies instead of the end user. An NCC study found that users rarely changed the preselected settings put up by the company. Facebook and google have they released unfriendly privacy choices set as the default, so you might want to take a look at your default privacy settings sometime soon.
Both companies are also very good at making it seem like the sharing of personal data and the use of targeted advertisement it's beneficial to the user. They go so far as to word it like the user is benefiting from this privacy intrusion and sharing of data. Of you choose to opt out of such privacy controls you will receive warnings about last functionality from the providers.
Google's privacy dash actually discourages its users from changing or even taking control of their personal settings. They have been accused implying that uses benefit from these intrusive default settings.
Meanwhile facebook is noted that users are given no substantial choice in privacy matters, even if you take the extra effort to change your respective settings.
I'm sure while you were reading this you were thinking that these dark patterns are standard operating procedure for companies like facebook and google. You are very right but that doesn't mean that you have to be ok with it. Now that GDPR has been enacted those standard operating procedures are illegal in the european union (sorry america). Companies with offences like this still built into the platforms and their policies need to remove them or risk up to 24 million euros in fines. Unfortunately because these dark practices are so mundane they have been resilient and customers have not particularly sought to address the glaring issues that this causes for their privacy.
If you are interested in limiting the ability of these corporate giants to invade your privacy then you should Start by looking into how to limit what Google knows about you. When it comes to facebook it's a little harder to rectify the privacy issues but you can start by looking at this awesome guide for Facebook Privacy .
Thanks to the advent of GDPR we may be seeing a change in the behaviour of the tech giants when it comes to how they collect our data. even if they make changes you should still be vigilant because you are data is their income so they will seek a way to leverage it. If you read through this entire article then you're probably concerned enough about your privacy that you will invest the time in addressing the issues posed buy some of our favourite platforms. Let's hope the future holds more policy like GDPR to help protect consumers from pretoria corporate activities.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://habarinetwork.com/2018/07/05/facebook-and-googles-privacy-shenanigans/