Some people believe that companies should be allowed to collect data about customers freely, while others believe this practice should be restricted. Discuss both sides of this issue.

Privacy is imperative for anyone to feel secure being online. While a group of

people

reckon that online businesses should be given the freedom to store

user

data

, another group suggests that it is a wrongful practice and should be banned. Those who favour

data

collection by apps believe that it makes the customer experience more personalised.

In other words

, a

user

gets to see a curated list of items perfectly matched to his/her interests in their feed, which is beneficial for the business as well as customers.

For example

, brands offer great discounts based on the products browsed by

people

which helps in better sales conversion, which in turn saves a lot of money for

people

and increases revenue for the sellers,

hence

, creating a win-win situation for both.

In addition

, tracking buyer statistics helps in better engagement as

platforms

try to adapt their new features according to customer usage habits. To illustrate, Netflix started offering an offline download feature when they got to know that

people

like to watch movies while they commute but did not have sufficient internet availability during their travel.

On the contrary

, there can be serious impacts of allowing internet

platforms

to track confidential

user

data

.

First

, it can result in an increase in impulsive buying among users. The

data

points collected enable businesses to know their customers too well which gives them a major advantage as they can try changing that behaviour for driving up their sales. To exemplify, most

platforms

now are aware of which

platforms

user

spends their most time on, what they watch, and even more to create customer profiles, which are

then

targeted with personalised marketing advertisements to lure a greater number of customers.

Furthermore

, there is always a risk of

data

leaks to potential hackers who can misuse the

data

for illegal activities.

For instance

, hackers can use stolen credit card info to make wrongful purchases on a

user

’s account.

Hence

, there must be laws to regulate

data

collection and its usage. To sum up, while there are positives of letting internet

platforms

consume

user

data

, the drawbacks can be even more dreadful. Governments must take serious action against any mishandling of

such

confidential

data

.