Apple’s New Card… Do We Need New Anti-Trust Laws?
So everyday many of us can not live without our iPhone device. It is not just a phone but it is a music store, music player, movie theater, television, web browser, and on and on and on… It controls your life and it tracks your every move. Yes, Apple can tell not only where you are but who you spend your time with. It also tracks your movement and about 150+ other telematics attributes about you. It knows how fast you drive. It knows where you hang out, how much sleep you get, and what you like to do, eat, and browse. Gast, it knows my exercise! Wow, have we just given up a bunch of our privacy? So what Apple has done now is take this to an entire new level. It created a new payment card service. WHOOOA!
Apple, is the ultimate Santa Claus! It knows if you are sleeping, it knows if you’re awake. It knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake! YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!
By the way Apple will know so much more about you when you sign up, and we will. It will know: How much you spend on groceries, what insurance companies you work with, who your cable provider is, and the ‘other’ banks you do business with. You know your mortgage, car payments, and other lines of credit. It will know when you are out of town, what hotels you stay at, and all the other things you do with your debit or credit card today. Let the marketing journey begin!
What could they possibly do with that information? It is a graph analytic delight of nodes and edges. It used to be that my data about me was in someway siloed by different vendors that I selected to work with? For instance, yes my bank has a great deal of detail about me. But it didnt know how I got to the drug store to pick up my perscription. My cable TV provider was siloed by what was on my set top box. Wait a minute, Apple TV! AH… My medical records are protected by PHI and HIPAA. I have always wondered in my career with big data that if massive consolidation happened across TV, internet clicks, banking, and healthcare data that our privacy would vanish.
I used to worry about big giant organizations that would act as monopolies. They would squeeze the market and control a product, service, or commodity. They would control the the price of things. This is no longer my biggest concern! My biggest concern is that I can trace almost every aspect of your life back to the Apple organization. They can consolidate this data and almost predict what you will do next. It is the ultimate big brother of time-series analytics and behavioral pathing. This leads me to a new form of Anti-Trust laws.
Anti-trust laws were formed to break up companies/organizations that attempted to control the price or quantity of a product or service. They were too big to fail. What I am afraid of now is the opposite? Will Apple become so vast and large that they are too BIG TO SUCCEED? I think so. One of the best things about data about you is keeping it from being consolidated as to not allow massive portions of it to fall into one organizations hands.
So my question to you is? Is this what you want? Do you want to browse the web, watch tv, use your GPS, have your device inform of your every move, understand your taste in music, and now monitor who you transact with? WOW! This is a crazy awesome time we are in and a very powerful time for data consolidation. I hope our Federal government is paying attention to this? I sort of doubt it; they will get out foxed by some of the biggest brains in our known universe!
Your data about you belongs to you. We need privacy more than ever! No thank you Apple, I think I will stay with my other massive payment conglomerate!
By the way, I just weened myself off of Facebook, so have a heart will ya! :)
