The Data You Never See

The other day, a friend asked me if I was interested in going to the stadium to watch the game. I told her I wasn’t sure yet and would need to check my calendar to see if I would be available and free to go. The conversation about the stadium ended there, nothing was said about it after that except that a lot of the ads visible on safari on my phone after that conversation were somewhat related to games and to stadiums.

That’s when I started thinking about data and how quietly it moves, how it casually collects and shapes the decisions of our lives. I hadn’t searched for tickets, I hadn’t typed “stadium” into my phone, I hadn’t even opened a sports app. And yet, somehow, that brief, ordinary conversation seemed to “come” back to me through the ads on my screen.

It made me wonder how much of what we call “choice” online is actually shaped by patterns built from our behaviour. Location data, browsing history, app permissions, search habits; each of these is a small data point on its own. But together, they form a surprisingly detailed picture. The system doesn’t need to know why I might go to a game. It only needs to recognise that people like me, in places like mine, after conversations like that one, often do.

In legal terms, many companies do not own your personal data. But thinking about the law critically and bringing it side by side with reality, is this really the case? Think about it, organisations don’t own your personal data but they are allowed to collect, process, analyse and monetise it in some cases. Isn’t all this a higher form of ownership? Isn’t this control? Is your data more useful to you than it is to the organisations that use it? Isn’t the organisation who dictates and determines how your data is used after collection more powerful and more in control than you who owns the data? Do privacy laws really resolve the imbalance with data ownership versus data control?

The conversation around data even gets more interesting as some people think that organisations notify you before your data is “collected” through ensuring you consent to their “terms of agreement or privacy statement”. These people forget these terms of agreement usually comes sometimes in several pages and very few people actually read them before giving their consent. They also forget that once data is collected, the balance of power begins to move  away from the individual but more towards the organisation that now “uses” the data. This means control has shifted without the data owner realising it and that “harvested” data can be used to predict behaviour, understand health statuses, understand the data owners purchasing power, tailor the opportunities you see, tailor the ads you see and lots more.

Today’s world has shown us clearly that the power behind data really lives in who shapes it and uses it to suit a narrative or make an inference from it. Going back to my story above, this is where the conversation really begins. It's not just about stadiums or advertisements, but about how data shapes our awareness, our choices and our sense of privacy in ways we rarely stop to question. It’s a conversation I’m continuing beyond this moment, one that unfolds more deeply in my book, which will be out soon.