The large majority of society are not aware of what is going on with their data and use services on internet regardless, and this is not a sustainable model.
Speaking at the Trust in the Digital World conference in Madrid, Richard Benjamins, group director of business intelligence and Big Data at Telefonica DG, said that Big Data and digital trust are not a new thing, but it is “a privacy time bomb”.
Benjamins said that five per cent do know and they are the savvy ones, but the majority are largely unaware and too many use a specific service and aware that their data is used for something else, and accept it as they like the service.
He said: “In the 2011 US Government report on telcos on what they were storing and for how long, Verizon said that they kept content of SMS for three to five days and there is increasing awareness of what companies are doing with data and storage. There is more awarensss and more need for privacy and transparency on what is going on.”
“We want companies to use data to improve their lives but this is a trust method. You trust a doctor and they do things for you, it is a trust relationship that we need to try to reach in this world also, and the best place for this industry to be is sustrainable and keeping the customer in the loop.”
He acknowledged that cyber security is a “huge opportunity for Europe” and there are still a lot of promises, but now the millennium generation are digitally literate and know what is going on and realise that a service uses their data, but they want the service.
“Things are changing and the challenge now is to extend that confidence to the rest of society,” he said. “Often it is people presenting on ‘what can I do without breaking the law’? It is not the right thing to do, as a business should enlighten a customer with data, but keep them in the loop and that is an innovation opportunity [that] is out there. Deliver a service that they really want and no one has done it today.”
He concluded by saying that transparency is more important as companies need to say what they store and use it for, as it is a long journey from where society is now to where this industry becomes really sustainable.
