The average user of the Internet provides various websites and applications with his personal data intentionally and unintentionally and in ignorance about his rights and the dangers of that.
With the spread of the Internet, the emergence of social networking sites, and the transfer of a large number of services to electronic platforms, collecting data on people has become a very easy process. Previously, the only way to collect data about people or measure their perception on a specific topic was to conduct questionnaires, confront them, and directly take their information. However, all this has changed and the data collection process is done very quickly and with a much higher efficiency.
Not only that, but personal data and details that some see as unimportant are collected, but in one way or another they are used to understand the person’s behavior and interests, and then benefit from them in legitimate and illegal ways. For example, data about your purchase history are collected in electronic stores or even products that you have reviewed and have not purchased, and in search engines, your searches are saved, analyzed and extracted from what happens to them within days.
In general, your data may be used to extract general information, such as the percentage of people who use navigation devices in a city, or the percentage of people who prefer to deliver food to the home than to go to the restaurant during the afternoon.
Even if we try to hide ourselves and do not record any data about us, the IP Addres is recorded, but this is often not enough to extract useful data about us.
The amount and volume of data collected about people is enormous, from purchasing history and site preferences to social media conversations and more. Never before has this amount of data been collected about people's lives in all its different aspects.
In a study conducted in 2011 in the Netherlands, the researcher found that Dutch citizens are registered in about 500 different databases, between governmental and private. Dear reader, you can imagine the size and accuracy of the data that we have produced to this day. Not to mention the operations of piracy and trading in database contents, which may double your presence in various databases.
The downside is that this data is used to annoy us with targeted ads sometimes, or to exploit consumerism by frequently displaying products we love to acquire, and it may reach even greater than that and criminal operations are carried out based on our data.
But on the other hand, different data has been utilized in developing new and wonderful products that have made our lives easier, and a large number of companies have built on the basis of this data and analyzed it to identify the problems we face and diagnose them accurately to reach the optimal solution that is in our interest as users and consumers.
Are there no laws governing this matter?
It is good that governments and organizations are finally starting to enact and implement laws that help protect data and not be used badly. This includes the European General Data Protection Law, which was implemented in May 2018, and this law implements a high degree of protection for user data in the European Union countries, and made all activities that provide services to these users under the authority of this law.
This law contains many provisions for data protection, such as disclosing the type of data that is collected and how long it will remain with the service provider, and it gives the user the right to request a copy of his data and delete it in some cases.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there are several systems for data protection, such as the credit information system, which obliges those familiar with this information from companies and workers to maintain the confidentiality of credit information and not to use it for any purpose except in accordance with the system.
The Communications and Information Technology Commission has also issued a system for combating information crimes, which defines these crimes and the penalties prescribed for each of them. The e-commerce system, which was issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Investment in July 2019, included provisions for protecting consumer data and not trading or disclosing it without his consent. These systems are continuously updated to achieve a position that guarantees the highest possible protection of personal data.
What about privacy policy?
The privacy policy is often not read by users, but rather they directly agree to it in exchange for entering the site and obtaining the service. In a recent study of the American consulting firm Deloitte that included 2000 users in the United States of America, the company conducted a simple test for users and 91% of them agreed to the privacy policy without reading it, and the percentage rises to 97% for the age group between 18 and 34 years. The study attributed the reason to either the difficulty or the length of the written privacy policy, and the reason may be ignorance of its importance.
And in July 2019, the FaceApp application, which uses artificial intelligence to create an image that shows how a person looks in the old age period, based on the image that the user provided them with, the application has been downloaded by 150 million users (as of July 16, 2019). The company that owns the application does not guarantee the privacy and confidentiality of your image. On the contrary, it states that it has the right to use your image, name and your preferences for other purposes.
Although the company issued a statement explaining that it will not use the big data it obtained for other purposes, after a large number of users addressed them and the application download stores, but who guarantees that ?! What is worse than that is who guarantees that they will not get the rest of the pictures in your mobile phone ?!
So what is the solution?
The solution is not not to use the World Wide Web, for it often facilitated our lives and provided us with great services, but the solution lies in rational use, including:
1- Spend part of the time reading the privacy policy. If you find items that you do not like or violate your privacy, do not continue.
2- Evaluating the website or application before agreeing to the use and privacy policy and allowing it to use your data, and do not forget to compare the required data and the service provided, it is unreasonable, for example, for a sports website to request data on your business details or a food delivery application for permission to access your photos or List your numbers.
3- Use the block feature in the browser, in your e-mail, your mobile phone, and others.
4- Be careful not to log in or download unreliable websites and applications, and browse the sites that you will visit for one time or for a reason that is not often repeated with the cryptic browser.
5- Use the electronic cloud rationally and do not upload high-importance personal data in it, but save it in physical storage methods such as disks and others, and make you have several copies in case one of them is damaged.
6- Scan your historical usage data in the sites that you visit every period, and an additional feature is available in some more professional sites such as Google, where you can request a copy of your historical data, which includes all sites related to Google, such as search engine, maps, Google Calendar, and others.
In any case, these are some preventive measures that will not make your data completely protected as long as you use the Internet, but it does, God willing, contribute a great deal to preserving your privacy and protecting your data.
What does the future hold for us?
In light of the tremendous growth in the use of data at all levels, whether it is clearly such as registration data on a website or in the hidden way, such as data on the use of electrical devices in smart future homes, this development comes with great challenges in the field of protecting people's data.
The amount of data produced makes tracking misuse more difficult, and the development of piracy methods further complicates the matter, but the new systems and laws are hoped to meet these challenges, and the technical development will contribute to the application of these systems and laws to achieve a satisfactory level of protection of personal data.
good job bro..keep it up[