Privacy
Hyper-Personalization: How Far Is Too Far?
Discover how transparency and individual consent in terms of the collection and use of customer data for this purpose can help you build a reputation as an organization that respects customer privacy.
Highly specific and curated experiences tailor-made for an individual based on their interests and past interactions — these are the benefits promised by hyper-personalization with the end goal of improving customer experience. Hyper-personalization is meant to deliver exactly what you need without any of the hassle of having to sift through page after page of product listings to find it. While there’s no denying that hyper-personalization sounds like a terrific idea, especially on paper, is there a catch? What exactly are we giving up for this convenience?
In an age where people are more security-conscious than ever, companies are being scrutinized for their data collection and handling practices, and questioning even supposedly helpful activities such as hyper-personalization represents a step towards cybersecurity awareness. So let’s take a closer look at what hyper-personalization looks like beneath its veneer of convenience.
What’s Going On Behind The Scenes?
It’s no secret that personalization of any kind involves tracking user activity and data. Hyper-personalization differs from traditional content personalization in that it is a continuous process. It involves the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics to constantly analyze user behavior patterns to ensure that the content, services, and advertisements being delivered to them align with their interests, tastes, and preferences. Your Netflix and Amazon homepages are perfect examples of hyper-personalization, with the entire home screen changing based on your activity.
Privacy Pitfalls
As with anything, striking a balance is key. Organizations need to walk a fine line between hyper-personalization and over-personalization. Here’s a scenario you can probably relate to: You’re talking to someone about buying a specific product only to start seeing advertisements for that exact product the next time you surf the web. Sure, while you’re seeing targeted advertisements for what you want, it can also feel quite unsettling, which defeats the entire purpose of hyper-personalization. What’s the point investing time and resources into improving your customer experience when all you’re doing is alarming them?
It comes back to striking a balance. The best way to avoid crossing this line is to use only the data customers willingly provide. Be transparent about what you collect, how you use it, and where it’s stored. And whatever you do, do not use their broader internet browsing history to push recommendations — that’s a surefire way to make people uncomfortable. Your company has a responsibility to ensure that it’s not overstepping the mark when it comes to customer data and privacy. Trust is fragile, and the moment customers feel their privacy is being invaded, you risk losing them.
In addition to all of this, when you’re dealing with this much customer data, it is a non-negotiable to bolster your data protection and security measures. While it is unrealistic to expect your security measures to be completely foolproof, proactively monitoring and reinforcing your security infrastructure with frequent audits is a great way to strengthen your security posture.
Make Sure To Keep The Cost Of Convenience Low
In today’s cyberthreat landscape, transparency is key. Keep your customers up to date on all your security and data handling policies and adhere to all relevant data protection regulations and standards. And as damaging as it may be in the short term, transparency about any data breaches you experience is an effective form of damage control and can prevent an otherwise greater reputational hit.
Make sure to also give your customers plenty of control over how their data is handled: Allow them to opt-out of hyper-personalized marketing and recommendations if they so wish to. Sure, this may make their experience less convenient, but it’s up to them to decide, isn’t it? Giving them a choice and respecting it is a great way to earn customer goodwill and build a reputation as a company that takes data protection seriously, which will prove vital in this age of increasing cybersecurity awareness.
Privacy
How Overreliance On Connectivity Compromises Home Privacy
Discover the impact of overreliance on connectivity on your home privacy. Gain insights into protecting your sensitive and personal information in a digital age.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is leading the charge towards a more interconnected and automated world. IoT technology grants unparalleled monitoring and automation capabilities while also reducing the amount of human intervention necessary.
Repetitive and well-defined processes can now be totally automated thanks to IoT, with the role of humans limited to overseeing the process and devising ways to streamline it further.
Apart from its numerous industrial applications, this technology is also the driving force behind the rise of smart cities and smart homes. The transformation of “dumb” devices like electrical appliances (fans, lights, and other household appliances) into smart, internet-enabled devices that can interact with each other and can be controlled remotely over the internet is what makes a smart home, well, smart. And as impressive and convenient as it is, the amount of data being processed by these devices poses serious privacy and security questions.
Are Smart Homes Really Private?
It’s perfectly natural to expect total privacy within the confines of your home. If not your own home, where else can you expect to be 100% safe from prying eyes?
The problem with smart homes is that IoT-enabled devices collect tons of usage data and could, at least in theory, provide opportunities for threat actors to obtain information about your schedule and habits.
Manipulator-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks are a major concern when dealing with smart home devices. In such an attack, a malicious actor manages to intercept communication between two or more devices, gathering data and, in some cases, even managing to take control of the devices themselves.
Thankfully, if you purchase your IoT devices from well-known and respected vendors like Samsung, LG, and Amazon, threat actors will have a hard time accessing the data being transferred between these devices due to the incredibly secure encryption they use. Moreover, if you follow IoT best practices, such as purchasing the newest devices, keeping their firmware up to date, and setting a secure password for your network that you frequently change (since most IoT networks are Wi-Fi-based), there’s no need to worry.
The truth is, if a cybercriminal has the know-how to pull off a breach on a secure IoT network, they’ll usually go after much bigger targets like businesses, for example. Most homes are simply not worth the effort.
Of course, there’s always the chance that your smart home vendor itself could experience a data breach, putting your data at risk, but if this is something you’re worried about, you can always invest in tech that stores data locally. Of course, this comes with its own risks, especially if someone manages to gain access to the storage location, but at that point, the robbers who have managed to break into your home in this hypothetical situation don’t really care about your smart home usage data.
The Cost Of Convenience
IoT and smart home technology have undeniably made life more convenient, and as we’ve already seen, if you invest in the right tech from reputed vendors and follow smart home security best practices, it’s quite secure. However, even if the devices themselves are secure, the vendors—yes, even the trusted ones—have a sketchy history when it comes to managing data.
For example, Amazon was ordered to pay a penalty of $25 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule), a U.S. children’s privacy law. The violation occurred due to Amazon indefinitely holding voice recordings of children collected from Alexa, its voice assistant, even ignoring deletion requests in some cases.
Back to the matter at hand: as safe as smart homes are when you know what you’re doing, any device connected to a wider network is inherently at risk of a breach. Since IoT devices are connected to the internet, there is always a chance they may be compromised either due to a lapse on your part or the vendor’s. With the pace at which the cybersecurity landscape is evolving, more and more new threats will continue to emerge that put your security at risk. Whether the convenience provided by smart homes is worth the risk, that’s entirely up to you.
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