By Jaideep Khanduja, Chief Technology Officer at AccioMango Pvt Ltd
Running an ethical data collection operation – the true meaning
Ethical data collection is not just a nice-wrapping to a complex process – in today’s digital ecosystem, you must ensure you are using the best performance platform as well as the most ethical one. Ask yourself and your data collection vendor -are you truly compliant? Are you following every required legal regulation? Are you in tune with every industry standard?
Why?
The digital sphere is one we need to protect, and online data is one of its most powerful assets.
When you bring together oceans of data from multiple sources to provide a single picture of business or market performance you need to respect the digital ecosystem first as well as global regulations and industry standards. This is critical for your business integrity and safety.
1. You must be sure you are not damaging the websites approached or the information displayed.
2. You must approach only openly available data – the same data your consumers or customers can view every day.
3. You must protect your business – ethical data collection ensures you abide by regulations, keeps your own data safe and secure, and makes sure you only collect what is public and available for your current mission.
4. You must ensure the technology used and the proxy network leveraged abide by every global regulation. For example, were the peers’ IP addresses obtained with complete peer consent and in complete awareness? Can they opt-out at any given moment with a single simple act? Can you actually guarantee that?
5. And furthermore – You must review the overall vendor’s security procedures, their onboarding process, their tests and checks – verify your business is in trustworthy hands. Do they accept any case, any customer or just the use cases that follow a well-defined ethical code? Look closely – how do they implement such procedures?
Yes, relevant online data will allow you to compete in full force! But collected the wrong way, avoiding clearly defined and PUBLIC ethical standards can put yourself and your business at massive risk. Is it genuinely worth the risk?
Spare yourself the trouble and assess your data collection operation and provider/vendor from up-close. Your present and future business steps depend on that.