New Year, New Approach to Privacy

Let this be a wake-up call for anyone who simply can’t be bothered to care about their data privacy.  Corporations are driven by profit.  Their profit comes from consumers like you showing interest, clicking and buying their products and services.  The more that they know about you, the more that they can influence you to buy their products and services. There is a huge market in collecting, analyzing, sharing and selling that valuable personal data with third parties, vendors, and even competitors. As we demonstrate in our white paper on Dark Patterns, companies will try to get you to do things that are not in your best interests nor even within your intentions.

All of this is to say that your privacy is important.  So, what should you do about it?  Let the regulations help you. The next time a cookie banner shows up on a website, actually interact with it.  It won’t take long.  Tell the website you want them to collect only “strictly necessary cookies” if that’s what you want.  Or let them collect more, whatever makes you happy, but make an informed decision.

Regulators put these regulations in place so that people will actually benefit.  Don’t pass this freebie up.  The process doesn’t take long.  The websites are required to make the consents accessible and easy to understand.  It’s not row after row of legalese.  Typically, these consents consist of nested choices.

You get some broad categories of cookies you can consent to, but if you want to learn more about the types of cookies, you can click to expand the definition and get a better idea of what the cookies are doing and whether they are the type of cookie that you are okay with having associated with you.  It’s very user-friendly.

After reviewing some cookie settings, start up one of your new holiday gift IoT devices.  Go through the set-up process and think critically about the privacy access the device is asking for.  I recently received a fitness tracker and during the set-up, it asked me if it could have access to my phone’s contacts and call logs.  I said NO.  Just like that.  NO WAY.  I couldn’t imagine how it would be in my interests to share my call logs and contacts list with the makers of the fitness device.  Sure, some people compete in daily step counts or other fitness goals, but if I choose to do that, I will do it on my terms, when I’m good and ready, not during the holidays when I’m eating a lot and staying indoors.

With the frequent appearance of privacy consent requests on websites, they are easy to ignore and click through.  With the start of a new year, now is a great time to proactively figure out what you are willing to share and with whom.  After all, the regulations are for your benefit.

Clarip helps companies to comply with those beneficial regulations.  Our software and services help companies provide those all too important cookie consent banners.  We also help with vendor consent management, data subject request fulfillment, and much, much more.  To learn more, visit us at www.clarip.com or call us at 1-888-252-5653.