What is the Privacy Paradox?
Hello and welcome back to our newsletter. Today we are going to discuss about Privacy Paradox, what it means, and maybe how to avoid it.
Let’s dig right into it.
What is the Privacy Paradox? Recent research shows that the privacy paradox represents a discrepancy between users attitude and their actual behaviour. In other words, people claim that they are very concerned about their privacy, but they don’t do much or anything in order to protect it.
Research also shows that the decision making process of an individual regarding disclosure of their personal data is driven by 2 factors: evaluation of risks and benefits; risk assessment deemed to be negligible. The privacy paradox has a much more focus on e-commerce and social networking activities. This means that people are more likely to disclose a lot more information about themselves if they wish to network or shop online.
The GDPR law specifies that a company needs legitimate interest if they want to process user personal data.
Let’s look into e-commerce companies. Have you ever been required to disclose your gender or date of birth when checking out from an online shop? How do you think it can help you or benefit you if you decide to disclose this information? Short answer, it’s not going to help you in any way.
The company’s legitimate interest in processing this type of information about you, is focused mainly on advertising purposes. What does that mean? It means that you will be presented with ads showing products based on your gender, and you will be bombarded with other ads around your birthday, showing and making you feel special. These are only psychological tactics used by companies in order to manipulate you into buying more from them.
Is it necessary for them to ask for this type of information from you? No.
Do they ask for this data at the checkout? Yes. Why? Because they know that once you’ve reached that stage of their website, you’re not going to just leave without actually buying everything you wanted. They are absolutely certain that you’re not going to look for the same product somewhere else just because they asked for a bit more info about you.
We are in an era where everything needs to happen now. Since you’ve spent 30 minutes or even an hours browsing an website and building your shopping cart, you’re not going to do the same thing in another place, just because they wanted to know your birthday. When you reach that checkout stage, the company can ask for almost anything from you, because, in the back of your mind, you think it’s worth it. And surely, it may worth it right then and there, but we can guarantee that when you are actually being targeted online, and see how much they know about you, you won’t think it was worth it anymore.
It’s time for you to escape this privacy paradox, and actually start protecting your privacy.
You are in control. You can ask any company to delete your information, stop them from sending you marketing emails and stop those targeted ads.
It’s your personal data and it’s your decision. Don’t get manipulated.