Spring Cleaning

Have you ever considered what happens to data once its original purpose has been fulfilled? It would perhaps be best if there was an expiration date, like the one on the now solidified bottle of holiday eggnog in the back of my refrigerator. Unfortunately our information now has a life of its own, whether we like it or not.

Through ongoing innovation, the cost of data storage has become so low that it has made economic sense for service providers to retain everything and anything in the hope that it may provide value one day. A business model that is often discussed is compiling and selling details about an individual’s interaction with resources on the internet to marketing enterprises. These firms use that intelligence to present targeted advertising.

This is one of the trade-offs that could be considered as subject to informed consent, although it appears that many internet users are willfully blind. At this time there is no federal law in the United States that prohibits or limits data collection. The latest scheme is to use aggregated and anonymized content to “train” Artificial Intelligence. Billions of email threads in millions of email accounts furnish the raw material to develop Large Language Models that make the chatbots and other AI products appear to be humanlike.

Searching for a restaurant, looking up directions, posting a selfie, streaming a video and tracking our steps are all actions that can be recorded, analyzed and combined without our knowledge. This is done over and over, and the future will reveal techniques for recombination that we have yet to conceive. Despite this, a person might well agree with the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of a specific application service provider, when that application is relevant to them. Readers can look further into issues surrounding service company terms in the recent article at the following link.

New Terms Plain English

What happens to data when a user no longer needs an app, and in fact it is deleted from their device? The service company still has it, and, while they may have benevolent terms today, there is no assurance that there won’t be changes. New owners could decide that there will be new terms, and that they are now going to sell user data. The prior management had pledged to never do that. Would you even be notified of the change, now that the application has been deleted from your device?

This is the reason that an annual Spring Cleaning is something to consider. As a general rule, when the user has finished using a tool, it should be put back where it belongs. In the digital realm, that means being aware of your footprint within an application. While the process varies depending on the software and system, the settings of your device may allow for you to locate any stored usage data. If so, it may be possible to delete this information. It will certainly be possible to delete or close your account with the service provider.

When an application is no longer necessary, the protocol should be to delete usage data, if possible, delete the user account, and then delete the app from the device. Spring Cleaning is recommended as an intentional review of the applications on your devices to determine if any are no longer needed.

If this is your first time, what about accounts that have already been deleted, and are now long forgotten? One place to start looking for unused accounts is a password management application, or, if one is not being used, a written password list. More information about passwords can be found in the article at the following link.

Recent Developments Regarding Passwords

Once this Spring Cleaning is done, adopt the habit of closing unused online accounts as a best practice as they are discovered. Reinstall applications that you no longer use and then delete what you can. Then simply delete the apps again. Just do it.

These days we all are producing more inputs into these systems than could ever have been imagined, with countervailing consequences to match. This writer believes that there will be genuinely important outcomes, but individuals must become aware, protect ourselves and protect one another.

If you have any questions about managing applications on your devices, please do not hesitate to contact me at the Extension office for a one on one technical support session. I can be reached by telephone at 828-837-2210 x6, or by email at daniel_ferreira@ncsu.edu.