In a provocative OuiShareFest talk titled You Are the Product, Aral Balkan says this:
I think we are at the point where we have to ask ourselves the very uncomfortable question: What do we call the business of selling everything else about you, that makes you who you are, apart from your physical body? And why, if this is our business, is it not regulated?
While I think regulations too often protect yesterday from last Thursday, I’m in sympathy with Aral on this one. While I’ve been working for years on simple means to signal, for example, whether or not we wish to be tracked when we leave a website, I’m not sure those signals will be respected unless backed by the force of law.
But my mind is open about it.
So there are two questions on the floor here.
- What do we call the unwanted harvesting of personal data (our digital body parts) online?
- What policies, if any, would we recommend to back the expressed wishes of people not to be followed when they are online?
Thanks in advance.
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