Profiling, Privacy, Surveillance

According to Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (2020), currently, 35% of Australians aged 18-34, 42% Australians aged 35-49, and 49% of Australians aged 50 and over have experienced issues of online marketing. Their personal data was used for unwanted marketing. They are worried about their data is shared between one company for other purposes such as location tracking and targeted ads. 58% of people think it is uncomfortable about targeted ads based on their activity online.

In general, Australian people are displeased by commercial profiling rather than government data practices. 56% of people feel uncomfortable about companies making outdoor advertising based on consumers’ data. Furthermore, 53% feel uncomfortable with companies combing consumers’ personal data such as loyalty card and other data such as IP address to improve customers' profiles.    

Even though people feel uncomfortable with how people’s data is used by companies, only 23% of Australians think their levels of knowledge about privacy are excellent or very good. On the other hand, 40% of people think their knowledge is fair to poor.

 Finally, 87% of Australians want to control and choose the collection and use of their personal information and only 34% of Australians think their data is controlled properly.

The New Organ(2018) explained data tracking and advertising with an impressive video. The video focused on the issue that the internet collects our every activity both online and offline and we cannot avoid it. Today, we are living in the digital era, and consumers’ data is essential for marketers. In addition, the internet is powered by advertisement, especially on social media. By collecting consumers' data, companies can provide data for consumers effectively.

Today, 86 % of people ages 18-29 use Facebook and  67% of people ages 18-29 use Instagram (Khoros, 2021). In addition, according to Statista (2020), aged 25-34 years were the largest group of online shoppers in the U.S.  

We also researched people’s attitudes towards privacy problems. According to Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, 70% of Australian people are concerned about privacy protection.   

Therefore, we decided the target of our project is digital users aged 18-35 and telling them the privacy problems of social media and the Internet.

In our digital life, users' personal information such as preference and location are sold and bought between brokers and companies. When we use social media or check websites,  they ask us to allow location or cookies. However, they ask us many times or we have no choice of ‘don’t allow’. When we use the Internet, we must give data to them, and our IP address might be abused. If personal data is leaked, the consequences can include the corruption of databases such as exposing confidential information and affecting the intellectual property that leads to theft, criminal and fraud.

Therefore, our social design intervention focuses on Internet users aged 18-35 and give them opportunities to control their information tracking and gain their knowledge of data tracking system.