Q: Many people are now opting to provide technology companies with their personal data in exchange for access to software. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

In recent decades, digitalization has given rise to various internet-related frauds. It has been observed that people share their private information to IT

firms

in return to use certain applications.

This

trend has proved to be the root cause of numerous cybercrime-related issues and

therefore

, possesses more demerits than merits. In

this

essay, we will understand a few shortcomings of

this

trend.

Firstly

, by providing access to our private

data

to the technology

firms

, we open ourselves for humongous possibilities of crime.

In other words

, since the company can access our phone

data

, it can

also

see ones' private details

such

as photographs, social media identity and password, bank passwords and

therefore

, can lead to an offence like identity theft, bank fraud.

For instance

, 2 months back, one of my online vendor did some unauthorized transactions from my bank account as they had my banking info saved at their website.

Secondly

, these information technology organizations sell the captured

data

to other companies to use.

Moreover

, selling customer info has become one of the leading revenue-generating business models these days. To illustrate, we receive sales calls

such

as for online shopping, for buying credit-card, buying properties. Have we ever thought from where do these

firms

get our contact details? They basically, buying it from the companies who already have captured our

data

from our mobile phones. To conclude, by providing personal information to technology

firms

one can get prone to cyber threats like identity theft, fund frauds and will

also

have their info shared with various other companies for business purposes.