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Ethical Design

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Sharing Data

2:46 with Hope Armstrong and Michelle Zohlman

We'll consider ethical concerns with sharing data.

More examples:

  • In fact, in a large academic study of nearly 6,000 of the most popular free children's apps, researchers found that the majority share tracking and behavioral advertising data, mainly due to their misuse of third party SDKs.
  • Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of Up to 87 Million Users - Products that extend to third-party developers expose sensitive user data. Facebook revealed data from 87 million users to Cambridge Analytics, a political consulting firm connected to the United States President Trump to influence the 2016 presidential election. Facebook acknowledged a vulnerability that exposed most of its 2 billion users to having their public profile information harvested.

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    MICHELLE: I'm sure you've seen a terms of service or a privacy policy. 0:00
    Lengthy and challenging to understand, most people do not read them. 0:04
    In these legal documents, companies explain how they share user data. 0:08
    But companies do not always abide by their terms. 0:13
    HOPE: In 2018, BuzzFeed reported private data was shared by Grindr, 0:17
    a popular social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. 0:22
    Grindr shared their users HIV status with two companies 0:29
    without explicitly notifying users. 0:33
    Even worse, some demographic information, including sexuality and 0:36
    ethnicity was transferred in plain text, making it vulnerable to hacking. 0:41
    Sharing health information with third party tools threatens user safety. 0:48
    Grindr argued their privacy policy states that 0:54
    public profile information will be made public. 0:58
    Although the average person may not know or 1:01
    understand what they've agreed to in the fine print. 1:04
    Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and 1:08
    Technology project, argues that what the law regards as informed 1:12
    consent is in almost all instances uninformed consent. 1:18
    Until April of 2018, the British pregnancy and 1:24
    parenting club called Bounty secretly acted as a data broker. 1:28
    Bounty did not inform the millions of people using their service that they were 1:34
    sharing approximately 34.4 million records with 39 organizations. 1:38
    Included was information about new mothers, mothers to be, and children. 1:46
    The Information Commissioner's Office fined Bounty 400,000 pounds. 1:52
    As we've seen, there are enormous consequences for collecting and 2:00
    sharing data. 2:03
    A good rule of thumb is to not over collect data, only ask for what you need. 2:05
    For example, here's something I learned from Sabrina Fonseca, 2:11
    a principal design strategist at &Partners. 2:15
    Let's say an app requires a user's gender for communication purposes. 2:19
    Instead of asking for a user's gender, ask for pronouns. 2:23
    Folks may not want to provide a gender and 2:28
    you don't want to conclude a person's pronouns based on their gender. 2:30
    For the data collected, respect your users' rights by keeping personal data 2:34
    confidential, being transparent about how you use their data and 2:38
    acting according to your terms of service. 2:43

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