Uses of Personal Data in Big Corporations Essay Example

Tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google harvest our data. The data about us are cheap and worthless by themself, but they can be easily reproduced and sold to different entities such as governments and other large companies. The value of data is determined by how well it merges with the data that has already been collected, so the value cannot be predetermined. 

Big tech companies know what we like, what website we go on, what songs we listen to, and what movies we watch. Do you ever wonder how companies such as Netflix knows what shows to recommend us? These algorithms are created to benefit us in some way, they can make our daily lives more convenient by showing us what we want. Donovan Choy states “Facebook, Instagram or Amazon, our data are used to train their algorithms and artificial intelligence tools that are constantly running in the background and enhancing our overall user and shopping experience”. The algorithm created by these companies make it easier for us to look for things we are interested in. 

Companies can make huge profits off our data. Data is the new oil, everyone wants it. According to Jurgita Lapienytė “The value of the data economy of EU27 was almost €325 billion in 2019.”  This is just the data of 27 countries in the European union, imagine if it include nations such as the United States, China, and Great Britain, the data economy would tremendously my larger, and according to the United Nations “The five largest firms in the world-Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft-are actors in the data economy with a combined market value of nearly $4 trillion in 2018.” That is a lot of money considering that the data only shows five companies.

Every time a website asks you to accept a cookie, the website tracks everything you do, from what you are viewing to what you are clicking, but in general cookies are made to improve the user experience. While when you decline cookies, it could interfere with the website. On shopping websites Amazon cookies are used to track what you put in the shopping cart. Cookies in general only collect data that has been stored in a device, for example it can store passwords, but it turns them into hashes and scrambles them into pieces so only the website that is stored on can read it.

Data leaks are a common occurrence nowadays with how much of our data companies have. In 2017 Yahoo had one of the biggest data breeches, according to Abi Tyas Tunggal “a group of hackers had compromised 1 billion accounts. In this instance, security questions and answers were also compromised, increasing the risk of identity theft.” With this data breech users’ passwords, personal emails, and bank details were also leaked. In 2019 Facebook also had a very big data leak, Tunggal also stats “Facebook app datasets had been exposed to the public Internet.” Over 146 gigabytes of data and 533 million records detailing users’ personal information were leaked. This is unacceptable considering these are big companies that collect our data. If companies can’t protect our data, should they be collecting it. 

The internet is very large, it contains around 74 zettabytes of data which is around 1000000000000 Gigabytes. 5% of all the internet data can be found in the dark web which is around 53687091200 Gigabytes. That is a lot of personal data that could be accessed through the dark web. Many illegal actions happen in the dark web, such as the selling of fake passports and, social security number, credit card fraud, and identity theft also is a big issue in the dark web. 

Google is the best search engine compared to other search engines because they quickly will give you results you want. Google collects the data of many individuals to find trends, and these trends will give you what you want. 

Tik Tok is another company that collects a ton of data. The company is also linked to the Chinese government. The Chinese Government is notorious for collecting data on people. The Tik Tok algorithm also considered one of the best. The Tik Tok algorithm will recommend you things you will find funny or enjoy. But the cost of this is that it tracks all your data. Tik Tok was involved in a scandal where the app would track everything on your phone even if you weren’t using the app. In 2020 Tik Tok was nearly banned in the United States and other countries with the fear that the Chinese Government had direct access with the previous company that owned Tik Tok. 

Our data is the most important thing we can have. Many companies would pay a fortune for it. Many companies harvest our data without our consent. There are many pros and cons to these companies collecting our data, and one of the cons is that many of these companies experience data breeches often, and the user’s personal information gets leaks to the public, and a pro to these companies collecting our data is that they can enhance the user experience, by doing things such as recommending things we like or want.