Tweets, Spotify, Google searches – what do your digital footprints reveal about you?

Tweets, Spotify, Google searches – what do your digital footprints reveal about you?

By Sandra Matz

The internet, smart phones and social media have transformed almost every facet of our lives – in a staggeringly short space of time. We can now listen to almost any piece of music ever released through our phones, communicate with each other – whether a neighbour or a stranger on the other side of the world – instantly, at any time of day or night, and find the answer to any question we have ever pondered in just a few clicks. Love it or loathe it, we all use technology every single day, at work, at home and everywhere in between, to make our lives easier, richer and more enjoyable.

Yet, as exciting and life-changing as technology can be, some believe there are also worrying side effects. One of the most controversial issues surrounding technology is privacy. If we are using our phones to do everything from our weekly shop to watch films to speak to our best friend to vote – what information can our phones hold on us and what could happen if it’s used in the wrong way? We asked leading computer scientist, assistant professor at Columbia Business School and Fast Forward Forum speaker Sandra Matz – what do our digital footprints really reveal about us, and should we be worried?

What does our digital footprint tell companies and organisations about us?

There is no getting around it – our behaviour and interactions in the digital space can be utilised, by organisations with access to that data, to make inferences about the user’s likes and dislikes, characteristics and habits.

Everything from what images you have liked on Facebook to the memes you’ve tweeted to the articles you’ve shared on LinkedIn can be used to accurately estimate highly personal details about your life. These might include whether you are gay or straight, left-wing or right-wing, an introvert or an extrovert – all elements to your identity that you might prefer to keep private, or at least to choose who and when you share them.

Personality marketing isn’t new. Organisations have been trying to get to know more about their customers and tailor their messages to them, in order to increase their effectiveness, for some time. Everything from store loyalty cards to questionnaires and surveys allow companies to find out more about their customers and better tailor their products and services to them.

Yet the evidence so far has shown that automated assessments, based on the trail of information we leave behind us as we traverse the internet and apps, enables organisations to form a more accurate picture and also more easily detect trends and changes in our behaviour. I have studied this at length and digital footprints can be very effective at helping companies to create more successful communication tools.

Many people’s social media posts and activity are available for all to see online. They offer a wealth of psychological data and this can be used to capture people’s psychological characteristics and persuade or influence them. This marketing practise is called psychological targeting and was at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, where data about up to 87 million Facebook users was collected from a third party app and used to create profiles about voters. Cambridge Analytica worked on Donald Trump’s campaign and there are claims this could have impacted the election result.

My former colleagues conducted a study using Facebook likes to see how accurately these could be used to predict elements of people’s personalities and identities. The results were fascinating. They could be used to accurately predict a person’s ethnicity 95% of times and gender 93% of times – while forming more accurate judgements about an individual’s character than their co-workers.

Is there cause for concern?

There are many ways in which this data could be used for positive means – from ensuring the adverts we see are more interesting to us to helping us to make healthier life choices. However, this also sparks serious concerns about how this data could be used in negative ways – to manipulate people and to infringe on their right to privacy. Everyone from a company to the government could use this data to infer things about individuals that could be used against them, and even pose a threat to them, if the data got into the wrong hands.

Currently legislation in both Europe and America has concentrated on improving the transparency of how data is gathered about users and giving users an option to opt-out of sites or app collecting this data about them. However, legislation will need to go further in order to fully address the techniques organisations can and will use in the future. There is a requirement for further policy interventions and regulations.

Sandra Matz is Assistant Professor of Management and Organizational Behaviour at Columbia Business School. You can listen to her speak at the Fast Forward Forum in Venice this October – find out more at www.fastforwardforum.eu/

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