Nearly every technology start-up wants the same thing: more data. But in the rush to collect all manner of information about customers, tensions are rising in Silicon Valley over whether such practices amount to a form of surveillance that customers will ultimately find invasive.
Whether ordering an Uber, streaming music, shopping online or tracking a health condition, consumers are giving an unprecedented amount of information to technology companies.
![Uber wants your digits. All of them.](/web/20170126113237im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/s/w/s/z/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtswdi.png/1485399245541.jpg)
"The data that companies ... have on you is significantly greater than you appreciate," says Mark Suster, managing partner at United States venture capital firm Upfront Ventures.
Collecting big data helps Airbnb, for instance, know whether its customers prefer to travel to the beach or mountains, and Uber knows popular drop-off locations and how to price trips.
Collecting large amounts of data is also paramount to developing artificial intelligence (AI), among the most highly sought technologies in Silicon Valley, which teaches machines to make decisions that humans previously had made. AI can, for example, help a shopper decide on a new pair of shoes, help a doctor diagnose a disease and enable a car to drive itself.
However, questions loom about how much personal information start-ups are collecting and how securely they store the data, with whom they share it and how they intend to use it.
"We are going to become comfortable with a level of surveillance that we never would have previously been comfortable with, because it makes things just a little easier," says Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist with Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Some start-ups have overstepped. Uber faced an investigation by New York's attorney general into a feature known internally as "God View," which allowed employees to access and track the location of individual Uber riders without obtaining permission. The company settled the matter and agreed to encrypt customers' geo-location data.
Peter Coles, head economist for Airbnb, says the data his company guards is fairly benign. "I think it is very unlikely that we would be collecting anything about users that they would be surprised to know."
Reuters