We’re only a matter of days into the new year, but already there has been a big buzz about privacy – and it shows every sign of increasing in importance through 2020.
Privacy was THE hot topic at CES, the massive Las Vegas tech show. Not only did keynote speaker Ivanka Trump come out in favour of individuals being in control of their own personal data while she was being interviewed on stage, but big tech names from Google to Facebook and Apple were queuing up to tell the world about product and policy updates which showcased their laser focus on user privacy.
If the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 was something of a watershed in consumer privacy understanding, and 2019 was a landmark year for privacy in many ways, according to TechCrunch, will 2020 become the year in which it is, finally, front and centre of everything?
Our founder and executive chairman, Julian Ranger, has gazed into his crystal ball for 2020 – and his ‘dead certain’ prediction is that there will be more privacy legislation worldwide, along the lines of GDPR and the brand-new CCPA in the US.
A key benefit of this, alongside the very welcome, overdue and wholly necessary step of giving individuals back control of their personal data, is the raising of public consciousness about privacy issues, and specifically, the difference between companies doing the right thing on data, and those who are not.
This, in turn, creates pressure on operators who are not making privacy a priority – because consumers, in general, are becoming more ethical about what they use and consume.
And that’s not just a hopeful theory – research by Edelman found that 64 per cent of consumers are now “belief-driven buyers” – who will choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand because of its stance on a particular social issue.
So we can expect raising awareness, among consumers AND brands, that privacy is not just a nice-to-have, but is increasingly business critical.
Julian also predicted that MyData solutions (including but not only digi.me) will start to become much more widely adopted in real use cases with hundreds of thousands and even millions of users.
This is crucial because become active proof that privacy and innovation are not in conflict, but go hand in hand when the individual is at the centre of their digital life, helps stoke the fire and persuade others this is the way to go too.
The more visibility those of us in the MyData sphere can give to the benefits of privacy to innovation, customer satisfaction and convenience, the further and faster the movement will grow.
The fires of privacy have certainly been well stoked for the start of this new year – now the pressure is on all of us to keep them burning.