Software giant Microsoft wants to simplify data protection for the average user by shifting to an “opt-in” process for privacy settings.
This runs counter to the general practice followed by tech giants like Google and Facebook that make users jump through hoops even just to find those privacy settings. At a Senate hearing in March, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana remarked of Google’s effort to hide those settings, “”You can hide a dead body in there and nobody would ever find it.”
Alfred Ng explains why the current opt-out process is a problem in this report from CNET:
Tech giants like Facebook, Google and Apple have also called for a data privacy law, though the specific details vary. In Microsoft’s vision for privacy regulation, it calls for shifting the burden of protecting your data from the person to the tech companies.
The majority of data protection is an “opt-out” experience, meaning that data collection is the default, and people have to find their privacy settings to shut it off. In March, lawmakers criticized Google over how difficult it was to actually opt out of its data tracking programs.
“This places an unreasonable — and unworkable — burden on individuals,” Brill wrote in the post. “Strong federal privacy should not only empower consumers to control their data, it also should place accountability obligations on the companies that collect and use sensitive personal information.”
Microsoft has the numbers to back up how often people actually take that extra step to protect their own privacy. In the year since GDPR came into effect and Microsoft released its Privacy Dashboard, Brill said more than 18 million people have used those tools.Considering that there are about 1.5 billion Windows devices, that would mean only 1 percent of Microsoft users have actually changed their privacy settings. Similarly, there were about 2.5 billion visits last year to Google’s Accounts page, but only about 20 million people viewed their ads settings.
Microsoft’s call for privacy legislation is to make sure that tech companies are the ones responsible for your privacy, not the other way around. Brill also noted that privacy legislation should have strong enforcement.
