Fintech professional’s tech predictions: 5 – better understanding of privacy settings

This is the fifth prediction from a fintech contact of mine making tech predictions for the next five years.

Previous blog posts in this series predicted that tech firms will soon need government certificates if producing news content, to fight against fake news, and the cyber security risks associated with smart energy meters, the risks associated with sharing data, and how social media will fall under increasing government regulation.

In this post the fintech IT professional looks at how the public will become better informed about the privacy settings online and how website operators will be forced to adopt rules including default settings that protect consumers. Data is valuable to a raft of businesses but its use, if not carefully controlled, can potentially harm its owners, the consumers.

Fintech IT professional says: “There will be wider public understanding of privacy settings and how these can be undermined by website operators. Governments will introduce standard definitions for privacy settings, specify default settings and monitor compliance by operators. The public may also shy away from providing as much data as the understanding of how seemingly unimportant information can be assembled over a period of time and interpreted by data analysis, whether that be by commercial, governmental or criminal organisations.

Recently in further response to the controversy surrounding Facebook’s data sharing agreement with London-based data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, the social networking giant has announced further steps to improve privacy controls.

These blog posts came about following a conversation with one of my contacts. He had lots of predictions for tech over the next few years and I thought I should share them and get some comments from the wider public. A few of the predictions might be a statements of the obvious to those more closely involved, so he sent them in context of trends emerging over the next 1 to 5 years.

Read part 1 here.

Read part 2 here.

Read part 3 here.

Read part 4 here.

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