Communications of the ACM
Privacy Cannot Be a Casualty of the Coronavirus
Americans arent willingly surrendering their online identities during this pandemic; many are being compelled to do so by their schools, family, or work.
Credit: Michael Houtz/Getty Images
Millions of Americans, sheltering in their homes from the coronavirus, have turned to communications platforms like Zoom, Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger in order to work or stay connected to friends and family. Free and easy to use, the services are gobbling up record numbers of new users.
But there's a saying in Silicon Valley: If the product is free, you are the product.
This is not business as usual, though. Americans aren't willingly surrendering their online identities during this pandemic — many are being compelled to do so by their schools, family or work. Just as a swath of manufacturers are switching their production lines to ventilator and mask production for the greater good, corporations that normally view every new registered user as a data point to exploit need to take a pause on profiting from online data harvesting.
For those fortunate enough to have laptops and reliable broadband internet at home, it is not sufficient to simply update privacy policies or customer agreements. Americans need a guarantee that conversations held over video chat won't be data collection events.
From The New York Times
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