In our last blog, we got an overview of various ways in which we can look at Data. We will start looking at one of the angles which is very important and becomes very very critical as data keeps increasing – Data Ethics. More specifically, we will look at it from the perspective of products being developed for ‘Data’ When we look at various products that are being developed around the ‘Data’ focus, we need to be aware of the fact that data is also just like technology. It is a boon to mankind, but if used in a wrong manner, it can be very dangerous. We see businesses ask for information that has nothing to do with how you are interacting with them.

For example – there is a case, where, to unlock a trading account of an individual, a company is forcing the user to provide all possible personal information including his/her current income.

In another case, a telecom giant is luring customers into getting phone numbers of their choice with just a single button. The user just has to click – “Proceed”. What the users miss is the fine print below this button – which says that the individual clicking the button gives permission to the telecom company to share all the information about the individual to anyone and everyone. Worst still – there is no way where the user can deny this permission and move forward. There was also a case of an event management company – which had a clause in the agreement in fine print which gave rights for video recording and all the copyrights of recording the event to this company without even the host getting to know about the same.

Companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are fighting legal battles due to the manner in which they have used the data that they have access to. There are numerous such incidents happening around us in our daily life. Randy Newman’s lyrics – “It’s a jungle out there” fits very aptly in today’s data-context.

How do we survive in this ever-expanding jungle?

It’s up to us – those who are building the product – to ensure that we use the data in the right manner. Most of the times, while building the product, the focus is on the user experience, the technologies being used or even on the problem it is solving. While this focus makes perfect sense from a business perspective, how many times do we think about the “User” being the central focus?

A lack of such a focus results in situations resulting in a lack of trust in the product. There’s an old saying: “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” That is exactly what a lot of corporations seem to be following. What a lot of them don’t know is – even companies like Google have had to deal with the fallout one way or another.

As a company, it is comparatively easy to deal with a fallout as businesses can get away with financial penalties or other tangible fallouts. However, are we, as a society, ready to deal with such approach? Every user shares data with a business with an implicit assumption that he will get an appropriate benefit or ROI on it. The user trusts the business to keep the data confidential and to use it only for the purposes it is meant for. Any business model basically is a model of trust. What happens once this trust is broken?

There is no easy way to rebuild the trust. The easiest way to not breach the trust would be to make sure every person who is a part of a business treats the data that a business collects – as your own data. Any data scientists or engineers working on the product will then surely give a thought to how their own data can be abused – before making use of it in the product.

There are certain rules which if followed, can help you treat the collected data as your own data and thus ensure that the business remains trustworthy and causes no harm to the society while still achieving their own goals.

These rules are the so called 5 C’s:

  • Consent
  • Clarity
  • Consistency
  • Control
  • Consequences

In the next blog, more about these 5 C’s…