Early on, companies took a very serious view in their requirement standards for “data sharing” and this often included policies for access in production environments. However, even with strict compliance requirements, there are few that monitor anything else, let alone anyone to enforce the existing policies. This is one of the reasons that companies such as Google and other platform companies jumped in and held the “API-carrot” in front of their business partners. Offering unwitting users free Gmail accounts allowed them to sell off personal data to third party vendors as well as opening the doors for these same vendors to actually “read” the email.
In July, 2018, The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled: Tech’s ‘Dirty Secret’: The App Developers Sifting Through Your Gmail Software developers scan hundreds of millions of emails of users who sign up for email-based services:
“Google said a year ago it would stop its computers from scanning the inboxes of Gmail users for information to personalize advertisements, saying it wanted users to ‘remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount.’
But the internet giant continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools.”
But Google isn’t the only one, almost all of the service providers have some form of this type of sharing, and this includes the social media provides such as Facebook.
While these corporations continue to say one thing and do another, we can all sit around and wait for improved security or take actions on our own. One of the more popular trends has been to sign up for a VPN (virtual private network). This will address the basic email and communication sharing questions including:
- Protection from untrustworthy/snooping Wi-Fi hotspots.
- Some anonymity level online by shielding your location.
- Get around website and streaming geographic restrictions.
There will continue to be questions regarding corporate restrictions for data sharing, the general public depends on the internal control and restrictions, which may not be answerable to any government regulations. It remains that both the individual and other businesses must be personally responsible for their own security.
Governments will continue to try to put regulations on corporations for third party data sharing, and since technology is in a continual state of evolving, these programs must be constantly reviewed and updated. We also know that as a society, we are eager to embrace the new technologies that are being dangled in front of us, and this desire may open the door for continued threats from cybercriminals.
“Da Vinci Forensics is embedded in the word of cybersecurity, specialising in keeping up-to-date on each of the methods that criminals use to harm both citizens and companies. Our team works closely to investigate and advise those that may have vulnerabilities. We know that protecting personal and proprietary data is a key to success, and we go above and beyond the call of duty to assist in fighting against this form of crime.”
Da Vinci Forensics
