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[ 4 minute read ]
Third Party Spies
Research Your Researching
Imagining the future
You know, I can't help thinking that there are bars to improvement in the real world simply because approaches to research are not researched beforehand. What do I mean by this? I get offers to join research teams from various bodies but they want me to register using a MicroSoft form. I think it was Groucho Marx who said he would never want to be a member of a club that would allow someone like him to be a member.
I would never give my details to a research body by way of a data harvester like MicroSoft. Who would? Surely, the best people to have on a research team are those that are able to understand that their details should not be shared. Certainly, I know that my every comment can be, and is, traced and followed and analysed. Any answer to a question like, 'How would you improve this....?' is tagged and details added to a profile of me stored by a third party. That profile might be useful to the person it pertains to today, in terms of subscribing businesses offering tailor-made deals to individuals, but tomorrow, it will bar you from being offered opportunities from elsewhere.
It is highly unlikely that individuals will be swamped with a constant stream of offers bombarding their phone with messages all day. The average recipient would ignore most of them and as a target audience the cost of contacting them rises as a ratio of return on investment (ROI). Hence, only a few opportunities will be sent to the individual. This means that other offers are never offered to the individual. In marketing, businesses want to build brand loyalty to stop people shopping around and instead make them pay more for their product. Many people might put this down to convenience. 'It is just easier.' I suggest that this expectation of a convenient way of life reduces jobs and negatively diminishes social interaction. It was the commodification of meat products by supermarkets that destroyed the high street butcher, not the butcher's prices on their own.
When businesses ask us to send electricity readings online, it is not for your convenience; it is to save them money because they don't need to pay wages to someone to visit your home. If you think that there should be more available jobs, make the meter readers come to your home, even if you leave a note outside your door with the meter reading on it. You do not need to spoil your day by being at home, just use analogue solutions.
Any entity that sends me an email that links to a data harvester such as MicroSoft or Amazon, without warning me that the link goes there, is placed on a 'brownlist' that urges 'CAUTION - UNSCRUPULOUS ENTITY!' The reality is that the entity has not researched how to research properly. Do market researchers want sheep who follow the crowd. Ultimately, that would be a dream come true because it wouldn't take a lot of time or money to figure out trends. However, market researchers should be keeping an eye out for innovation and viral ideas and concepts. You can't reach mavericks the usual ways, like with data harvesters; many people are too savvy to go near them.
Of course, modern businesses use other businesses to conduct activities that are not their own core activities, because they don't fully understand how to do much these days. This is a desperate move away from vertical integration, which is hugely expensive to maintain (economies of scale - that sort of thing). I however, have no intention of ever giving any entity permission to share my details with third parties.
The trend away from vertical integration is over a hundred years old though. Henry Ford's Detroit assembly line in the early 1900s is an example of vertical integration. They forged their own steel and had leather workshops and so on. I think Rolex (watchmakers) are still vertically integrated because they even forge their own particular type of steel, which I believe is used only by them. They don't make the diamonds though, they get them from nature (de Beers?)
All Open University students can have an email address that ends .ac.uk. However, they all have to tell MicroSoft who they are beforehand. I think that is why I almost never see a student email address that ends .ac.uk. I am certainly not going to allow MicroSoft to know where and how to listen in to my email conversation.
I suspect it takes a little while for businesses to send emails for customers to verify they are who they say they are, because the password to an email account can be harvested once the cookie is on the users device and many people log into their online accounts before they log into their email account. I always log into my email account before I log into my bank account for example, and especially before I log into 'Indeed', the recruitment business. Note that you get a verification link on your phone while you are talking to the phone network customer service person, and not some minutes later. One minute for an email to be sent is bordering on excessive, I suggest.