On Friday, October 27th, Joe Toscano came to deliver an empowering message to the Belmont Hill community in the Hamilton Chapel. The speech focused on the importance of data privacy and how companies like Google are impacting our everyday lives more than we might think.
Mr. Toscano started as an engineer and pursued his path after college to one of the biggest companies in the world: Google. After working at Google for several years as a software engineer, Mr. Toscano left Google over privacy and ethical concerns. After Google, he wrote Automating Humanity, a book focusing on the ethics and morals of industries that deal with privacy regulations as well as the increase of technological literacy. Mr. Toscano was featured in Netflix’s widely known Social Dilemma and now travels the world as an international keynote speaker, spending his days informing and analyzing the risk within data transactions.
Under the chapel lights, Mr. Toscano made it clear to students that companies all over the world are breaching their privacy through technological advancements they have grown accustomed to— using Google as an example. He shared much of his research gathered within Google about its data misuse. His solution to prevent further misuse of data by these large tech corporations focused on political ordinances that would force companies to stop gathering data on people. Mr. Toscano made it clear that the importance of safeguarding sensitive information is often overlooked.
After the eye-opening chapel, faculty, staff, students, and various peer leaders gathered in the chapel basement to further the conversation. When asked about the impact it might have made in his own life, he mentioned some positive takeaways stating, “It’s highly convenient when Spotify knows my music preferences and sends me notices about a concert coming up in my area—it’s helpful.”
Mr. Toscano wrapped up his speech with a couple of examples of how companies in the past have exploited consumers. One of the most shocking examples consisted of a girl who decided to buy unscented lotion rather than scented lotion. Target was able to data-mine consumers’ buying habits and noticed patterns that women who switch over to scent-free products are most likely in their second to third trimester of pregnancy. Target then started sending coupons for baby items, which happened to reach the parents of the targeted women. After the parents found out, the women sued Target for a breach of data privacy and the unregulated profiling of an unaware consumer.
In terms of the message that Mr. Toscano was trying to leave, the takeaway seemed to hit a little differently for many of the students. Mr. George thought that students should focus “less on the security threat and more on the awareness of companies using and keeping your data for their own benefit.” One example Mr. Toscano touched on was how Amazon bought Whole Foods and collected data for strategic and financial benefit for themselves.
When asked if there is one thing he wants the community to know, Mr. George stated, “I hope students are more aware of what they are putting on social media. Don’t be afraid to take that extra second to make sure you’re not agreeing to something you don’t want a company to have access to.”
