Big Data: How is it Legal for Companies to Collect Your Data?
Last Updated January 16, 2020
The previous article in this series focused on how big data is collected and used by companies to profile customers and develop targeted advertisements or other business incentives. This final article looks at how companies are able to do this legally and with a customer consent.
Terms of Service Agreements
When trying to understand how companies are able to collect different types of information about people, it may be a natural response to assume companies are obtaining this data illegally. In truth, however, companies are not only operating within their legal rights when they collect and use this information, but they are doing so with the explicit legal consent of their customers.
Companies can obtain legal access to your data fairly easily, oftentimes before users even realize they’ve given their approval. The key here is to look more closely at Terms of Service (ToS) agreements and understand what they mean for customer privacy.
ToS agreements are the long texts that appear when signing up for a service. As a prerequisite for creating a new account or using a new program, users are often told to read and then agree to the terms. As these terms are both long and full of sometimes confusing legal sentence structures, most people simply click “agree” and move on to creating their accounts.
In doing so, users may not realize that they have effectively “signed” a legal agreement that allows businesses to do whatever it is they have included in the terms. If a business includes a clause that permits data collection of customer purchase histories, and then you click “agree,” the user forfeits any legal right to bring a dispute.
The issue is made even more complicated by the fact that some companies include clauses that give them the right to change the ToS without giving notice to users. This means that by simply “agreeing” to the ToS once, when first creating an account, users effectively agree to any changes the company wishes to make, even if these changes include increasingly invasive data-collection procedures.
Notable Examples
Each major web service maintains its own ToS specifics, and it would be impossible to chart everything a user agrees to in every case online. But for a taste of what can be included in an agreement, some company examples include:
- Google – Google maintains the right to keep all search history and use it and other user information for future services. Google also tracks users on other websites that use Google widgets or analytics software.
- YouTube – YouTube keeps everything users choose to post. Simply deleting videos from the site does not actually delete them from YouTube’s servers. The service also reserves the right to delete user content without warning and can change its terms without notice.
- Facebook – Facebook includes Terms of Service clauses which permit user tracking on other websites and automatic sharing of any data users place on the site with other businesses and services. Users of the Facebook Android app may also be surprised to learn that the ToS includes a clause that allows sound and video recording at any time without user consent.
- Netflix – The ToS for Netflix includes both the right to disclose user information without notice and the waiver of the right to bring a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Read the Fine Print
While this information may seem like cause for significant concern, the reality of big data collection isn’t as dire as it may appear. That said, it may be worth paying closer attention to Terms of Service agreements in the future. Make sure you know exactly what you are “signing” when you click through to the next step in account creation.
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