Technology the Good the Bad and the Ugly

The Bad
I was recently hired to develop a data collecting system for cars that would share your driving habits and performance abilities to insurance companies without your knowledge, piggybacking the use of your own phone - with or without your knowing it for a major insurance company in the US. All you have to do is plug in your phone to the USB port of the car to charge it and the car is hacking you.
This would be used to determine your risk factors and the price you pay for everything around your car including insurance and ability to rent cars.
When I was briefed on the project I told them to go f-themselves and walked away.

When data and online "privacy laws" are discussed, I find most people have no idea what's at stake and how much this potentially changes their lives. "I've got nothing to hide" I hear. "I'm not a criminal" I hear. That's not what it's about.

the Ugly
Based on your data that is shared by Facebook, Instagram and all the other ........ that collects data on you, you will have access or not to a great many things. Other things will cost you a lot more than they cost other people or you may get free stuff that other people don't. You might not ever see the availability of services or benefits that other people have access to all based on how your data collection portrait. That is to say, this is by no means necessarily an accurate description of you and your behavior. This is a portrait of you for sale manipulated of just screwed up, whatever will fetch more money.

The Good & the Ugly
Here's an example. Recently I went to World Ducati Week in Misano, Italy. There were limited free and really amazing experiences to sign up for such as Riding a DRE Panigale V4S on the track for free. This is usually several thousand €. Riding a new Desert X with DRE instruction, Riding Multistradas etc. All free.
To sign up, you had to log in with your profile created on the Ducati APP with your Bike collection and buying history.
When it came time to sign up all the spots available went really quickly as I signed up with a large group of people at a Ducati Owners Club in Italy with several hundred people. It was open to everyone.

I had just bought a Panigale last year. I got everything I was looking. Track, dirt riding, Desert X, everything.
Friends with old Ducatis who never buy anything had an impossible time signing up. Nothing was available.
Coincidence?

WWD is one thing. It's all fun and games where a company spending hundreds of thousands to make a big 4 day catered party as a marketing campaign.

How much you pay from rental cars, airline tickets, a lot of things on Amazon, insurance, any loan, credit cards, on and on and on is all based on your data.
This is optimized profiting.

If you doubt it. Go online and price an airline ticket using your own computer, then have someone who never flies or make a lot less money than you do, do the same at the same time and see what price difference you get on the same website. This started in the early 2000's btw. Once I saw a flight from SFO - PHX with a $2000. price difference between mine and my secretary's computer using the same website, same search. That was in 2009.

The Exceptionally Critical
IMO, this is the end of a democratic or fair market. It can only get worse as this sort of thing makes it into all aspects of our lives. The EU has strict laws that make the US look like the wild west, with ZERO protection. Every web cookie in the EU has to get an OK. In the US you don't even get a notice you're getting web bagage.
If you can get a job or keep a job, if you can rent a house or not, if you can get into college, if your kids can...

This is how important data privacy is.

DucatiTerminator said:

I think it's really going to depend on the company, and while I don't doubt your data collection background and expertise (Thank you for your insight, BTW!), I don't feel that your Ducati App example fits in this particular case. I have the Ducati App as well, but I rarely log into it, and have had an incomplete profile since the beginning. I was offered the same experiences as you and several more as Ducatista Plus, including access to things like the MotoE bike, Project V20C (STO Streetfighter), and private consultation with Ducati Unica program among others. In fact, I had so many that I gave away a few of them to people I thought were more deserving. And in my son's case, once they realized that he has track experience on my bikes, the coaches gave him an uncorked V4S as opposed to the majority of the bikes that were in Sport mode. And he doesn't have the Ducati App. I'm guessing it was coat tailed off of me, but this was not the only example of this at WDW. In this case, I think Ducati used the app/info to "track loyalty" and give priority to those who are longstanding or hardcore Ducatisti based off of history. Some of this info is no doubt provided via app, but I was among several longtime Ducatisti who use their phone primarily as a phone and were likely offered even more than you or I. No doubt you saw the cluster .... with that many people at Misano (surprising handled extremely well -- hats off to the WDW team!), but I do think that the app was the only fair and organized way to offer the remaining event spots to the masses, and data collection was just part of the process.

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Ya I didn't get the idea that the Ducati app is a particular evil example, it's just marketing info, and prioritizing. It's all the other crap that worries me.
My biggest complaint at WDW was I wanted more shade trackside hahhaa. Otherwise it was a pretty damn good party.