Privacy and Security
Ubiquitous information technologies such as smartphones enable the collection of users every digital action and allow private enterprises to commoditize a user’s data. This leads to asymmetries of power between the users who share their digital actions and the corporations who can aggregate and analyse their data for profit.
The benefits enjoyed by the users act as a justification for the loss of privacy resulting from this activity. In this series of blog posts, I review the origins and core concepts of the surveillance capital business model and its effect on privacy and I discuss the potential dangers of an environment where a user’s every digital action is recorded. At Snapfix we’re acutely aware of the importance of winning and maintaining our users trust and it’s critical that we strike a balance between providing a compelling service and respecting our user’s privacy.
Europe is emerging as a potential champion of privacy as a fundamental right. China has taken a different approach, prioritizing progress in data science and AI above the need for users privacy. The US lies somewhere in the middle. Snapfix intents to embrace the European approach and apply high standards of privacy and transparency to our handling of personal user data. We consider this to be a sound long term strategic approach to our handling of data.