Privacy may be a 'luxury'

Data, information protection and security concerns are a diligent pattern we report on pretty much consistently since PCs started booting up. Presently the financial stakes, social ramifications and innovation are turning out to be increasingly genuine and complex. Privacy issues used to be based on staying away from trackers of online movement as they chase after you with ads for things you are searching for. As an excessive number of political and moral outrage have been uncovered, information security has now gotten one of the characterising social and social issues of our period (Meehan 2019).

What does privacy means?

As per the dictionary, privacy is a noun that means “a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people”. Such a simple state to define but so hard to achieve in today’s world which is full of organisations that are eying on our personal lives to collect more and more data and make profit.

What does luxury means?

As per the dictionary, luxury is also a noun that means “a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense”. Or in simple words, anything that have been acquired by spending a huge amount of money.

So is privacy becoming a luxury?

There are many companies out there that provides services for free and are still in business, in fact, earning a lot of profit. So how do these companies are gaining? What are their products when they are providing everything for free? The answer is you. You are the product of these companies. These organisations perform mining and selling of your personal data in return of the services they are providing. If you want to maintain privacy and protect your data from getting sold out then there are services available that you can use but those services, obviously, comes with a cost. And that is why in this data saturated world, privacy is becoming a luxury good. You need to shell out money if you wish to keep your activity private. For example, there is a service available for $230 to encrypt the data in the internet cloud, a $420 subscription to portable internet service to bypass untrusted connections on internet and even a $35 filter to shield the laptop from coffee shop voyeurs. Other products can also include a $85 smartphone case, created by a New York based entrepreneur Adam Harvey, that blocks signals to and from phone and $5 a month service to provide disposable email addresses and phone numbers for protecting against the ‘so-called’ legal mining and sale of personal data. There is even a $629 not-yet-released phone that runs on Android which has a pre-installed software that will help users to make encrypted calls and send encrypted texts (Angwin 2014).

All this shows that privacy is becoming a luxury which only the rich can afford. A recent open letter to Google’s CEO claims that cheaper Android phones are more likely to have malicious and unremovable apps. As Android is an open source platform which is available to device manufacturers ranging from technology giants to small lesser known brands. As big companies like Samsung takes care of the security of the phones, some lower price device’s manufacturer cuts corner to produce a cheaper phone. Cheap smartphones that runs on Android operating systems comes with a bunch of pre- installed apps that cannot be removed. These apps are known as Bloatware and they can compromise with the privacy of a user by tracking the activities. This means individuals with lower income are more exposed to privacy violations than the wealthier people (Morrison 2020). 

Privacy appears to be a smart thought, as another help. It is very evident that organisations will, in general, gather as much buyer information as they can and have next to no interest for good insurance of security. The web is voracious, and does not keep secrets. For example look at Amazon, if you search something on Amazon, say an iPhone, and then move on to any other site to read some news then you will notice a vertical banner stretched across the site featuring iPhone. Similar is the case with Alexa which does a lot more than just listening to your voice instructions. Even if you decide to create a website of your own and provide privacy to user then also you will have to pay some amount in the name of a subscription that keeps your details from getting public, after purchasing a website domain (Ramos 2018).

Privacy has ceased to be something that naturally exists, and now comes with a cost. The invasive tentacles of data collection can only be escaped by people who can afford to pay for premium, ad- free services, leaving the vast majority to trade their personal information for free access to digital services and content. As more services pop up to protect privacy an important question arises; Do we want privacy to be something that only those with disposable money and time can afford?

Apple as a tech giant has always claimed that they have no interest in selling user data and Tim Cook also claimed that Apple is doubling its efforts towards privacy. The company is also doubling its contribution to selling iPhones and, yes, even new services. With the announcement of the next iOS update, it looks like the company is turning one of its classic features into an all its own service. Next- level encryption is about paying the Apple tax to be the best. With the declaration of the following iOS update, it would seem that the organisation is transforming one of its great highlights into an all its own assistance. Next-level encryption is tied in with paying the Apple duty to be the best thing you can get. Another feature called "Sign in with Apple" is going to change the manner in which iOS clients get to the phones. Rather than sending your email address to an organisation or utilising an informal community, for example, Facebook or Google, you will before long have the option to sign in with your Apple ID to devices. Tapping the Sign in button with Apple verifies with Face ID or Touch ID and makes a one of a kind irregular ID that keeps developers from getting to your own data. On the off chance that the application developer requests an email address, you will likewise be offered the choice to hint in with Apple to produce a one of a kind irregular email address that will keep your genuine email private. Any email correspondence that the application chooses to send, will at that point be sent to your original inbox from that arbitrary email. What makes Sign in with Apple such an appealing option in contrast to social logins is that it keeps you from being followed by organisations like Google and Facebook. Facebook and Google are offering login administrations since they give access to significant client information. As such, clients get a single tick access to applications, however they likewise penance their privacy (Estes 2019).

Apple has always positioned itself as a tech company that cares about user privacy, and that sales pitch has become more and more convincing as data breaches get worse and data-hungry companies like Google are increasingly swallowing up our personal data. As a result, targeted ads are becoming creepier — so creepy that many people think Facebook tracks our real-world interactions to better target advertising. This theory is probably not true, but it's alarming how much we know about companies like Facebook and Google, partially because their social login systems gave them a fire hose of personal data.

But doing your mobile computing on an Apple made operating system comes at a different cost. This new service will roll out with iOS 13 which means you will need to have a latest iPhone. That means if you wish to use these private services then you will have to purchase an iPhone that starts from $449 and goes all the way up to $1449 (Morrison 2020). In fact, data privacy has become a main selling point for the iPhone maker in recent years, as the company implicitly positions privacy and data security as a differentiator to partially justify its premium pricing (Yao 2019). The paradigm of Apple’s focus on privacy surely attracts lot of customers but the premium pricing of Apple’s phones makes it almost impossible for all the customers to purchase an iPhone in order to protect their privacy. This again brings us to the same point of privacy becoming a luxury good as customers who can afford these premium phones are the one who can also afford the services previously stated in this article and who are, of course, very less in numbers.

With advances in digital technology, traditional concepts of privacy, our right to be left alone and the fundamental principle that the content of our communications should remain confidential are being challenged and eroded. But privacy isn't the price we are paying for innovation. The two should sit side by side, and they must.

Today, businesses are built to help you protect your online identity, such as VPNs, cloud data encryption services, and subscriptions that provide you with randomised email addresses and contact numbers to access websites without providing true information. Many of these services however come at a cost. In fact, if you want advertisement free version of services such as Spotify and YouTube, one needs to pay a premium for them (Wadhwa 2019). In case of any privacy violations, the rich people can overcome the effects as they can afford various tools and services that can help them secure their privacy but those who do not take these paid ‘luxury’ services are the one who face the effects of privacy violations.

As the ending note I would say that, yes privacy is a luxury nowadays. But not all is lost, we can still whisper into others’ ears (Ramos 2018).

References:

1. Meehan, Mary (2019) [online] Data Privacy will be the most important issue in the next decade available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/marymeehan/2019/11/26/data-privacy- will-be-the-most-important-issue-in-the-next-decade/#7b9b7f861882;
2. Angwin, Julia (2014) [online] Has Privacy Become a Luxury Good? available at https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/opinion/has-privacy-become-a-luxury-good.html;
3. Morrison, Sara (2020) [online] “Privacy shouldn’t be a luxury”: Advocates want Google to do more to secure cheap Android phones available at https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/17/21069417/privacy-international-bloatware- android-google;
4. Ramos, Jorge (2018) [online] Privacy Is Now a Luxury available at https://splinternews.com/privacy-is-now-a-luxury-1825508671;
5. Estes, Adam Clark (2019) [online] Apple’s Newest Luxury Product Is Privacy available at https://gizmodo.com/apples-newest-luxury-product-is-privacy-1835233518;
6. Torpe, Kyle (2019) [online] If You Don’t Care About Online Privacy, You Should Read This available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2019/02/28/if-you-dont-care-about- online-privacy-you-should-read-this/#6bf3dc3f3886;
7. Solove, Daniel (2014) [online] 10 Reason Why Privacy Matters available at https://teachprivacy.com/10-reasons-privacy-matters/; 
8. Yao, Richard (2019) [online] Data Privacy Is Becoming A Luxury Good available at https://medium.com/ipg-media-lab/data-privacy-is-becoming-a-luxury-good-c7f731c92c7;
9. Taylor, Paul W (2003) [online] Privacy: A Civilized Luxury available at https://www.govtech.com/security/Privacy-A-Civilized-Luxury.html;
10. Wadhwa, Priya (2019) [online] Has privacy become a luxury good? available at https://www.sme10x.com/10x-industry/has-privacy-become-a-luxury-good;
11. Elizabeth Denham’s speech at the 30th annual conference of Privacy Laws and Business, Cambridge (2017) available at https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and- blogs/2017/07/promoting-privacy-with-innovation-within-the-law/;
12. van den Hoven, Jeroen, Blaauw, Martijn, Pieters, Wolter and Warnier, Martijn, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), [online] "Privacy and Information Technology" available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/it-privacy/;
13. Forbes article (2019) [online] As Technology Advances, What Will Happen With Online Privacy? available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/01/15/as-technology- advances-what-will-happen-with-online-privacy/#60a6bcba1c45;
14. World Economic Forum article [online] What If: Privacy becomes a luxury good? available at https://www.weforum.org/about/what-if-privacy-becomes-a-luxury-good;
15. Brico, Elizabeth (2019) [online] Privacy Is Becoming a Luxury’: What Data Leaks Are Like for the Poor available at https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbz493/privacy-is-becoming-a- luxury-what-data-leaks-are-like-for-the-poor;
16. Pichai, Sundar (2019) [online] Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pichai-privacy.html;