By Phil Maurer. Published 13. May 2016.
The Edward Snowden debacle drummed up interest regarding the NSA’s probing into what many Americans thought was private data. Of course, the NSA tried to downplay the whole situation, claiming they only looked at metadata.
Regardless, the incident created a serious topic that’s being discussed well beyond IT circles. NSA’s probing demonstrates why it’s important for individuals and businesses to own their data.
The fact is, data for your business or personal blog may not belong to you. Here’s a simple way to find out who your data belongs to. Can you easily export the data from your website to a removable drive or folder on your desktop? If not, then it’s not really yours. The data likely belongs to the third-party service provider you hired to setup/host your website, or more specifically, the data center that leases its web server to your web vendor.
Here’s an even simpler way of putting it. Unless you have your own web server, which can be cost prohibitive, your data almost certainly belongs to someone else.
Sure, you can look up your website’s dashboard for superficial key performance indicators, such as number of likes and comments, however, having access to data allows for a more in-depth peek. That means seeing things such as which subscribers opened your emails, who donated to your cause, how much they donated, and so on. This enables you to identify your strongest customers and modify your interactions with that demographic.
If your data belongs to another party, that entity can use the very same metrics for their own gain. In other words, they can profit off the followers that you worked tirelessly to accrue from the ground up. They can, for instance, embed self-serving ads on your site or even reach out to your followers via email or phone with their own offerings and propositions. On top of that, they can legally disseminate the information to government bodies, other businesses, or any entity that requests it. You have next to no say whether that data can be withheld.
Owning your own web server is the best bet, though other options are available if that’s simply beyond your budgetary means. Export whatever data you can and store it in a place that you can truly say belongs to you. One way to do that is via app or plug-in installed into your current platform, which then requests data regarding your followers.
The typical rules regarding ownership of physical property often don’t apply when it comes to online data. Going through a bit of more work to ensure that you own your data, though, is well worth the additional effort.
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