A growing rise in technology has seen most people interact with one another with some form of multimedia device. A great thing about it is that we can communicate with people from across the world in seconds. But we also have some drawbacks to with this type of technology. Anytime we go to use Facebook, or just surfing on the web, those providers are capturing your information and selling it to advertisers and other 3rd parties.
While this is already a known issue, with technology getting more and more complex, you can bet that these businesses are trying to find newer and better ways to collect and sell your information. We can assume that sooner or later, simply walking down the street and looking in a glass window of a certain product will trigger some type of response to send that person adds about that store and products.
So, should policy makers get ahead of this while they can? Of course, but how? There needs to be a system in place where a user can decline being tracked for advertisement. Kind of like what Apple did with one of their software updates that stopped apps from tracking them. But it needs to be expanded even more so. A more open-ended approach to this kind of tracking should be front and center, not masqueraded, hiding in 200 pages of terms and conditions. If a business wants to track and sell personal data, they should make it clear as day what they plan on using it for. A simple “we use it to improve our app” is a server understatement and one that should be punished under law.