I was never really familiar with the term metadata until we discussed it in class, and personally, I am caught in the middle of whether its an advancement or a violation of individual rights to privacy.
After reviewing the Immersion program that was created by Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov, I was flabbergasted and appalled at the same time. I think it is amazing that within a few minutes you can have a complete breakdown of what your life is has been like since you started your email. It reminded me of the accomplishments and set backs I had in life. I could tell due to the fluctuation in emails or lack of in my review. However, giving individuals other then myself the power to access such information without my consent is crazy. Everything I have said or what sent to me is in this little folder that the programmers keep; that’s scary to me. Even though I do think that it is remarkable how all the data I thought was lost can still be recovered, I do believe it is a violation of individuals rights.
I agree with you because I also think its a violation of people’s privacy. But in the defense of such companies that collect metadata they use it to personalize the way you use their websites according to your liking, also most companies that do this kind of collection metadata offer free web services and the only way they can maintain them free is by selling the tremendous amounts of metadata to other companies so those companies can use it to see what people think of their products. In a way the collection of metadata is a double edged sword good because its makes services free but bad because companies know us more than we know ourselves. Although I pretty much defended those companies I am not justifying the use of metadata, I still believe we should get asked if we want our metadata collected and if we choose to do so receive some kind of compensation since both the seller and the buyer they will be profiting from it and the only ones not getting any profit is the people whose meta data is being collected.