Spying On Your Customers Is Good For Business
from the uh-oh dept
Here's an article from MIT's Tech Review that might generate a bit of controversy. Basically, Michael Schrage is advocating spying on your users as a valid form of market research. I'm not exactly sure who he's trying to convince here. I think there's plenty of evidence of companies doing exactly that. However, he pretty much brushes off privacy concerns by saying that by knowing how people actually use their products, they'll offer better products, which will make everyone happier. It's true that the more a company understands how their products are used, the better they'll be able to design products, but that doesn't mean that users should give up their privacy.
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What bothers me is that none of these companies seem to simply ask for permission to do this sort of thing or admit to half the stuff they actually collect.
No wonder everyone is so afraid of sharing any data with them.
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