Scenario 1: With the help of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica harvested data for political advertising favoring the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign. They used an app to build psychological profiles of users and their friends without their consent.
Scenario 2: Verizon was tired of all the weak browser cookies, so they decided to build a supercookie to rule them all. The supercookie would track you across all websites you visited.
While you can delete other cookies, Verizon’s was one tough cookie that didn’t tell you what it was collecting, and neither could you delete it.
What do all these scenarios have in common? As much as we would have loved it, it’s not Facebook.
The answer is the centralization of data. Keep reading for workable tips on decentralized data privacy, Metaverse, Blockchain, data economy, and industrialization.
What’s happening?
Big tech companies harvest a lot of user data. You probably don’t understand how much they hoard, so let’s put it into perspective. For every average user, Facebook has enough content to fill 400,000 Word documents. Google has seven times that amount.
And who can blame them? Considering Meta made $40.96 as the average revenue per user (ARPU) in 2021, which translates to $115 billion in advertising revenue, it’s easy to see the motivation for doing it. Of course, it is a bad look to say they sell user data, so they cleverly cloak it as selling ads based on user data.
Then there’s the other thorny issue about law enforcement. Should a company give out private data if the Feds ask for it? Yahoo did so without a fight, unapologetically stating it was a law-abiding entity.
All this is happening because the centralization of data by big tech companies incentivizes the exploitation of user data. It is the only way they know how to survive.
Further, they bow to pressure when the authorities ask for data, or their security is never robust enough to keep them out. You will only be safe if you take matters into your own hands.
What you can do to stop the data harvesting
There is only one solution—decentralized data privacy, Metaverse, Blockchain, data economy, and industrialization of data collection. That is:
Don’t give out accurate information: If it’s not the government or a bank, don’t provide correct information
Deny data requests: deny every cookie access or data request you can get away with
Read privacy policies: If you must accept cookies, read the privacy policies.
Limit data sharing: If you must give out data that the entity can legally share, for instance, a bank, at least limit who they can share that information with
What is your best hope for decentralized data privacy, Metaverse, Blockchain, data economy, and data collection?
If your goal is total privacy, then settle on software that focuses on decentralized data privacy, Metaverse, Blockchain, data economy, and industrialization privacy security. It should be a single platform with a system that maps your privacy requirements for better data governance, such as:
Manage data whatever the privacy workflow: It doesn’t matter which operating system you are dealing with; the privacy software solution should integrate and let you customize every privacy workflow. For instance, it will allow you to toe the line of Apple’s requirements for deletion slated for June 30, 2022.
Provides full visibility: The software should grant you a clear data map of data catalogs, systems, and personal data through in-depth automated data discovery.
Comply with legislation: Laws vary across states, such as California’s CPRA and Virginia’s VCDPA, which come to effect in January 2023. The privacy solution should update you on legal matters and let you customize the data privacy workflow in a few clicks.
Opt-out of targeted ads: Since this is one of the critical points of privacy data software, it should let you manage to opt out of advertising policies across all the popular platforms.
Unmatched security: It’s simple—it should never see your data. Ever. The data should flow from users directly to you via end-to-end encryption. That ensures the software owners won’t lay eyes on private data, let alone a third-party vendor.
Conclusion
To sum up, the antidote to centralization is decentralized data privacy, Metaverse, Blockchain, data economy, and industrialization of data collection. Privacy lovers should be screaming from the rooftops how websites, social media, search queries, and cryptocurrency would be much safer when hosted on a decentralized blockchain.