Duck, Duck----Cyber Goose!
Growing up there was a familiar game played amongst friends to remedy random boredom, that game was duck-duck-goose. The overall structure behind that game was the following; first, you and your friends would sit in a circle. Second, a volunteer within the circle would essentially elect to be the "selector". Third, the volunteer aka "selector" would then walk around the circle tapping the top of each person's head reciting the phrase "duck, duck, duck, duck". Lastly, at random they tap a final head and shout "goose!".
The chosen goose takes off running, eventually tags the "selector" who then rejoins the circle and the game begins all over again.
This same game is being played in cyber land today. We sit in an obsessively oversaturated circle of social media and accounts that digitally saturates us to no end, which then "taps" us repeatedly on the head with solicitation after solicitation. And on top of that collects (largely without our consent) our information, essentially invading our privacy. Then, without realizing it-- we're "goosed".
The mounting fallout from cyber attacks on high-level, corporate infrastructures to the average person's email account keeps piling up, so what happens when we no longer wish to play a game where we're essentially goosed? What happens when we choose to deliberately and intentionally OPT out of ads and enforce individualized privacy settings?
Well someone attempted to do just that, but did it work?
In a fairly recent article posted on themarkup.org a reporter intended to do just that. The article entitled "I Tried to Use the Ad Tech Industry's Tool to Opt Out of Personalized Ads" walks us through a personal yet thorough experience of a reporter who decided to allow strict privacy controls to be temporarily paused while access was given to big brother, sister and baby cousin. In other words, no ad blockers and no browser restrictions. While this scenario sounds like the genesis of a wild child, it was a genius idea to test out if tech companies would actually stop using the data that they collected if you chose to opt out. Even with the use of AdChoices; a program by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) which allows a user access to hundreds of ad tech companies to request being opted out of targeted ads, this option fell short in a few ways. This is not a "one and done" option. It's a lengthy process that requires perseverance.
In the article Sankin writes, " In other words, DAA doesn't provide ad-tech companies with a central database of everyone who has opted out of targeting but rather requires me to add new tractors to my browser for each company that participates in order to opt out of being targeted for ads based on previous tracking." Essentially many of these companies can still collect data about you and if they do stop collecting data it may be advertisement data alone. Talk about wanting some milk with that digital cookie!
There is no one quick fix but there are preventive measures. Ultimately privacy does cost. The question is how much (figuratively speaking) and for how long. The current opt out systems are not serving us and even with the best intentions many fail us.
Do you have a trusted system or team that can help you navigate through the rabbit hole of data collection, breaches and cyber security? Have you assessed how much your privacy is worth? Are you prepared to stand at the forefront and defend your business and brand? At Nine Mile we believe prevention is the best protection. We can help and have the tools and know-how to support you.
Contact them to discover how today.
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