#175 Ethical Data Usage - Informing and Educating Consumers - Interview w/ Esther Tham

Sign up for Data Mesh Understanding's free roundtable and introduction programs here: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding / Scott Hirleman. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn if you want to chat data mesh.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center here. You can download their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.Esther's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esthertham/In this episode, Scott interviewed Esther Tham, Experience Designer at Thoughtworks. Scott reached out to talk about data ethics based on a post Esther made on LinkedIn.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Esther's point of view:When designing your UX (user experience), companies should aim for as little friction as possible when signing up or transacting. For an ethical company, that means collecting as little information as possible to still maximize value of the service to the user.Companies: if you don't need it, don't collect it! It isn't ethical but also it increases your attack surface for a data leak and potentially lowers consumer trust.We don't have the proof points of many companies doing the right thing and disclosing potential issues of sharing information with them in an understandable way. But that would likely increase consumer trust. Is that trust worth more than the hassle to a company? We need companies willing to try being more ethical to really know but it's a cost with a very uncertain upside so not too likely.People need to learn that their personal data has value - and risk - associated with it. Don't give it over without thinking about how it might be used/misused. But most people are nowhere near that thought process yet. Right now, most people are only worried at most about getting scammed, not should this company have my data and how might they misuse it.Ethics isn't just about collection or even usage, protection is also crucial. If you can't protect sensitive information, you shouldn't be collecting it.How can we encourage the general population to really care...