Online privacy has become a major concern for consumers in today’s world. Big companies are collecting consumer data but consumers are not able to set their privacy settings they want it. For example: Companies like Google are collecting your location data every time you log in through your mobile. Your location details are immediately tracked and this is used for advertising and marketing. Advertisements of different places like restaurants, stores etc start popping up automatically. This makes it very vulnerable for consumers in terms of privacy. This means that Google most of the times has a pretty good idea of where the consumer is which is clearly privacy infringement. The option for not collecting the data at that moment is given but to permanently turn it off has not been implemented yet.Some websites collect your information without informing the consumer or even without the consumer realizing it. If you visit certain unprotected websites, you can notice that you start receiving emails in your junk folder because at one point this information was collected and then distributed to other people making your personal information vulnerable. There is a very high possibility that when these unprotected sites were visited, ‘Trackers’ (Spyware, Adware) are downloaded onto your system and anonymously selected.
The FTC has designed some rules which helps protect consumers and their privacy but to implement this world over.https://www.eff.org/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy shows different ways in which consumer privacy can be protected. Facebook is a good example of protecting peoples’ privacy. People can modify their privacy settings in order to let others view only what they want about themselves. But even this is not totally secure as we have noticed, we see a lot of advertisements depending on the location we are logging in from. This shows that our location information is being shared with advertisers. The only privacy people get is sharing their information with other Facebook users. So no matter what people do and not give information out in public, they are not able to protect themselves from marketers. Companies should have an agreement with consumers if they are willing to share their information like age,sex, location etc as this could help the customers in getting better deals, offers and also knowing about the different places and what is happening around their location. The information of only those consumers who are willing to share it has to be shared and who will be benefited from it. In this way the consumers, portals and marketers will be working with each other harmoniously and they will be benefited from this.
