Hi ,
Depending on what make and model car you own, you could be driving a data collection hub on wheels - and it's not just collecting data about your driving behaviour, either.
Last
year, news outlet Reuters reported that, between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees allegedly shared sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded via customers' car cameras. These included images captured inside people's private garages and homes, sometimes showing people in embarrassing situations.
Surprised?
If you are, you're not alone. According to the recently released Singled Out report, produced by the (Australian)
Consumer Policy Research Centre, most "consumers don't understand key types of information companies use to track, profile and monitor them."
Consumers also "feel a lack of trust, frustration, anxiety and/or anger about their inability to control how their information is collected and used."
Here's the thing...
As a data scientist, it's natural to want to collect and hoard as much data as you possibly can.
After all, the more data you have, the better the models
you can produce, and you never know what data you might need in the future.
However, besides increasing the risk of a data breach, by doing so, you risk sacrificing your customers' trust.
Data is only useful if it creates value. But if over-collecting data
sacrifices trust, then that value will be lost.
So, how far is too far when it comes to data collection? The best advice I've heard comes from friend of the list, Dr Peter Prevos: "Don't be creepy".
And secretly capturing embarrassing images of people in
their homes definitely crosses that line.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to one of the co-authors of the Singled Out report, Dr Katharine Kemp.
You can listen to our conversation at the link below: Episode 37: Data Privacy in the Age of AI
Talk again soon,
Dr Genevieve Hayes.
