Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

 

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HOW TO EXERCISE THE POWER YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR

by Jonathan Zittrain

I used to be largely indifferent to claims about the use of private data for targeted advertising, even as I worried about privacy more generally. How much of an intrusion was it, really, for a merchant to hit me with a banner ad for dog food instead of cat food, since it had reason to believe I owned a dog? And any users who were sensitive about their personal information could just click on a menu and simply opt out of that kind of tracking.

But times have changed.

The digital surveillance economy has ballooned in size and sophistication while keeping most of its day-to-day tracking apparatus out of view. Public reaction has ranged from muted to deeply concerned, with ...