Whoever owns the data owns the future
Yuval Noah Harari 21 Lessons for the 21st century.
What do you love?
We do buckets of online personality tests, career quizzes and psychometric tests as we sift through our options for the best, brilliant future that we love.
The more tests we do, the more test owners can build their information about us into a personal profile. They link their data with data collected by others and build your profile. The older you get, the more they know about you. You become a commodity to be manipulated and used to their advantage.
Handing over our information to strangers online is like giving our house keys to strangers and letting them in.
Don’t hand over personal information online without knowing:
- That it will ONLY be used for the stated purpose.
- If it is going to be stored in Australia. (It probably won’t be.)
- When they are going to delete it. (Optus has details of customers who left them years ago.)
It’s the law. There are 13 rules (principles) that guide privacy in Australia. You can find the principles in the Australian Privacy law HERE.
This Download This Show podcast warns:
Data is the new oil. Companies want our information. The company that owns our data and can analyze it and make sense of it, owns the future.
Manal al-Sharif, Tech4evil podcast on Download this Show @ 8m17sec
Companies are not in the business of giving stuff away. They have to get something out of it. Most companies offering “free” services do not have strict rules about how they are going to use the information that you hand over. If they are not being straight with you about what they are going to do with your information once they have it, don’t hand it over.
Keep doing quizzes
You need all the help you can get to unearth your best path through life.
When you start looking for quizzes go for government sites like MyFuture which have strict rules about what information they collect and how they use it. Check their privacy policy as an example of what is okay.
It is long.
It needs to be.
You can check out these sites and be reasonably sure they will not be using your information to harm you or try to sell you something. But don’t assume they have great privacy and security to protect your personal information. I bet every organisation is revising its privacy and security strategies after the Optus debacle.
If you are unsure, ask me bev.J@infocus-careers.com.au. I won’t be able to see their security regime but I will be able to check to see if they are complying with the Privacy Law.
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