The reputational risk of
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 9:31 am
This set my brain on the path of thinking about equity data and where our desire to do good can run up against people’s expectations of privacy. Extend this to other verticals; for example, creating a marketing campaign based on population segmentation by area gets to this grey area very quickly. It’s difficult to remain ethical while new zealand whatsapp number data retaining privacy and equity and doing good for society. Imagine an insurance vendor that markets “renters’ insurance” to a set of geocoded locations known to rent, not realizing that the population selection for that campaign overselects from a minority group. not being vigilant about how data is used is real.
As I have been thinking about this for many years, it naturally came up in conversation with my good friend Karen Lopez, who is an authority in privacy, security, and data modeling. In a bit of a departure from the normal Cool Kids format, I asked Karen to write her thoughts below.
I love this topic! Speaking of higher education, I remember that in university our grades would be posted outside our professor’s door, listed by our Student ID, which was also our social security number (SSN). In those days, SSNs were issued locally, and one could tell the approximate location of where someone grew up by the first three digits of their number. If you were in a small class, you could pretty much figure out half the class’s grades based on their SSN listing. As a special note, foreign students would get an artificial SSN starting with “9.” That made tracking the grades of foreign students easier too.
As I have been thinking about this for many years, it naturally came up in conversation with my good friend Karen Lopez, who is an authority in privacy, security, and data modeling. In a bit of a departure from the normal Cool Kids format, I asked Karen to write her thoughts below.
I love this topic! Speaking of higher education, I remember that in university our grades would be posted outside our professor’s door, listed by our Student ID, which was also our social security number (SSN). In those days, SSNs were issued locally, and one could tell the approximate location of where someone grew up by the first three digits of their number. If you were in a small class, you could pretty much figure out half the class’s grades based on their SSN listing. As a special note, foreign students would get an artificial SSN starting with “9.” That made tracking the grades of foreign students easier too.