You should be scared about who has your data

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

A lot of people are having conversations about AI and privacy. And I’ve actually heard quite a few people say, “Oh, I don’t really care if they’ve got my data. I’ve got nothing to hide.” And I can understand why people think that because they think what personal data is there really?

And who cares? What are they gonna do with it anyway? Well, in today’s episode of the podcast, I’m gonna share with you some of the things that can be done with your data and why you should be really worried about who has access to it.

 I’ve recently been immersing myself into conversations around AI, emerging technology, scams, data, and where all of this is heading. And here’s the thing that I am learning. I don’t think most of us fully appreciate what data can actually reveal about us and how it has the potential to change our behavior.

Now, look, at the moment, what I don’t think people are thinking about is what happens when hundreds or thousands of seemingly insignificant pieces of information about us gets pieced together. Because I know you might think, “I’ve got nothing to hide,” but when you start to dive in a bit, it’s actually pretty scary what can be learned about you, and importantly, what impact it could have if this was used in a not so great way.

So I’m a trained accountant. I’ve always been pretty cautious with my data. As part of our training to be aware of where you’re putting your passwords in and making sure that you aren’t disclosing certain pieces of information at the same time that could be pieced together and have potential implications.

So I’ve always been quite cautious and conservative about handing over certain pieces of information, and I still had my identity stolen. And trust me, when that happens, it is a real pain in the backside. It affects a lot of different areas from your banking to your tax, and obviously that awful icky feeling that someone has essentially taken confidential information about you to, with the intention of doing not so great things.

So I am, you know, bringing that caution with me into my AI journey. I love AI. This is not an anti-AI conversation. I am using AI daily, and I’m certainly not about to tell you to delete all of your AI tools and, you know, go live in the countryside somewhere. But as you are on the journey, I do wanna be really raising the flag and letting you know that you do need to be careful about what you are sharing.

I’ve had people that told me that they uploaded their entire set of business financials into a general AI tool So I just want you to bear in mind that as you are using AI tools, particularly when it comes to anything that is a bit more sensitive, like financial information or health information, really be careful and conscious to think about what information you really need to be providing.

Can you anonymise it? Can you remove identifying information? Can you give pieces of the data rather than the whole thing? And I particularly want you to be really careful with other people’s data as well that might not be yours to share. So obviously, this applies to your client information because there are situations where clients are actively using AI themselves, and I know that, you know, I’ve been on call with clients and they say, “Look, it’s fine to plug all that in or to link back to to put this information in there.”

But that’s a very different situation to just assuming that someone is okay with that. Because your data is all the little bits and pieces of information about you and/or your business that are being pieced together 

So let me share an example. Let’s just say that you have been asking your AI tool about a, a burning feeling that you’re having in your stomach. So you keep asking, you know, what could be pain in the tummy? Maybe you went and got blood tests done, then you uploaded those blood tests into AI and said, “What does this mean?”

Maybe you mentioned medication that you’re taking. And none of those conversations, necessarily feels particularly confidential or like you’re giving too much away. But collectively, you’ve painted a pretty detailed picture of a potential health problem. And just to be clear, I am certainly not saying that your AI provider is handing information to your health insurer and then they’re going and putting your premiums up.

I’m not making that claim. But what I just do wanna flag with you is that you don’t know what could happen to that information and what that information would be worth if it ended up in the wrong hands So would you still say, “I don’t care who has my data,” if your health insurance suddenly had access to every health concern that you’d ever asked a question of ChatGPT about?

It could start to paint a bit of a pattern or a bit of a picture. And if your insurer had access to that information, they’d probably say, “Well, guess what? We’re worried that there’s something going on here. We’re gonna put your premiums up.” Similarly, what about your mental health? What if you’re having time chatting to technology about depression or anxiety or stress at work?

Would you care if a future employer had access to that? Now, I’m not saying that that’s not what necessarily is going to happen. What I’m just saying is that the data itself has value because of what it can reveal about you. I’ll give you another example. What have we told technology about our children?

I know this one’s made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I often asking questions, you know, “My nine-year-old has this rash. What could it be?” Or how do you help someone with a confidence issue with their friends? Maybe you’ve, mentioned planning for their birthday party, and AI can piece together, again, bits and pieces of information to figure out their birth date.

Maybe they can piece bits and pieces from things that you’ve shared, you know, the date that you’ve got book week, when they’re off school. They might even be able to figure out their school, or maybe you’ve even mentioned what school they go to. I mean, let’s face it, at the moment, your phone knows where you are driving and going all the time.

All this data is being captured. Individually, these things might seem pretty harmless, but again, what about when combined? How would you feel knowing that someone had your child’s name, age, school, your home suburb, where they regularly go, on what days, their medical concerns? You’d start to kind of feel a bit icky about it, right?

And you might think, “Well, I haven’t disclosed anything particularly secret,” but you don’t need to disclose the whole story for technology to piece the story together. So why is this important? And again, I’m not saying that, these AI platforms are gonna be selling your data or giving your data away.

But bear in mind that information is held somewhere, and that is then open to being accessed or hacked into. So just having that awareness is a really important piece of the puzzle as you are starting to use these tools. Okay, so how does data then potentially influence your behavior?

So let’s talk about, a scenario, something I’ve been thinking about at the moment.

Okay, I, I… And I do think that this is pretty creepy too. Now, we all understand targeted advertising at a basic level, right? If you’re on a website, you go look at a pair of shoes, and then what happens? Those bloody shoes follow you around the internet for three weeks, right? You keep seeing their ads pop up they’re on Instagram, they’re on Facebook. They keep popping up saying, “Hey, did you wanna buy me?”

So imagine the sophistication goes beyond knowing what you just looked at. What if it knew when you are the easiest to influence? And let me give you a hypothetical situation. Let’s just imagine that on a Friday night, maybe I’ve had a couple of wines, and I sit on the couch, and when I’m scrolling, I’m tired, maybe the, the inhibition’s down a little bit. I tend to buy more frequently, spend more, and be a little bit less price sensitive. And what if technology knew that? Suddenly, the valuable is, information isn’t just like, Clare likes to shop online. It’s, Clare is substantially more likely to spend more money at nine PM on a Friday night. Imagine advertising systems knew how to optimize not just what they show you, but when they show it to you, what emotional language they use, and which version of a message you’re most susceptible to.

And this is where, this becomes less about marketing and more about influence. And then let’s take that thinking and start to question… Well, let’s take that same principle and apply it to something, much bigger than shopping. What if someone was trying to influence something else about what you believe?

Now, I know I’m starting to sound like a tin hat conspiracy theorist, but this isn’t entirely hypothetical. We’ve seen a version of this through the Cambridge Analytica and the big controversy over Facebook data and political microtargeting, and this was before generative AI had blown up the way that it has now.

The information we are giving to technology is becoming bigger. Now we actually are telling AI what we’re worried about, what’s frustrating us, what we like, what we’re scared of, what our financial pressures are, what our relationships are like.

Now imagine that there was enough information to not just merely understand that someone holds a particular political belief, but what argument or way of structuring information might be most effective at changing that person’s belief? Think about what that means during an election or a war or a period of civil unrest. Propaganda isn’t new. Governments and organisations have been trying to influence populations forever. But what’s different now, in my opinion, is the potential ability to personalise persuasion based on the information that they know about an individual. So instead of one piece of, propaganda that went out en masse, imagine that that information was able to be targeted to people with subtly different messages that was designed around that particular individual and what they are most likely to respond to.

And this is where I start thinking we should care a lot more about who has our data 

So the biggest misconception I believe we need to challenge is, because I’m paying for this tool, I’ve got the most secure version, therefore, everything I put into it must be completely private and secure.

Yes, different AI products and different account types have different policies around how your data is stored and used, but you really need to understand the tool that you’re using  📍

And this is where I want to put my accountant hat firmly back on because we’re seeing people treating AI like it’s their accountant, their business advisor, their CFO. And yes, AI can be bloody useful with numbers, but don’t confuse the fact that, yes, technology can help analyse numbers with thinking that you should upload all of your sensitive financial information into it  📍

this is the reason why AI can’t replace financial experts. It can help, but you need to have the commercial context and the human judgement to really understand if the outputs are actually accurate 

I am certainly not telling you not to use AI. In fact, I think that if you refuse to engage with AI, you’re gonna find the next couple of years really challenging as a business owner. But AI literacy isn’t just about writing prompts. It’s knowing what the technology is capable of and being aware of what its limitations are and the risks that you are creating by using it.

You also need to really, on this journey, make sure that you are aware of where human expertise is still really essential 

I don’t want you to become paranoid about technology, but I do want you to be appropriately scared about the value of your data. Because saying, “I’ve got nothing to hide,” completely misses the point. The question isn’t, do I have something embarrassing that I don’t want people to know? The real question is, if everything I’m revealing could be pieced together and accessed, what could someone know about me, and what could they potentially do with that knowledge?

Could they influence what I buy? Can they identify when I’m vulnerable? Can they impersonate someone I trust? Can they make assumptions about my health? Could they learn things about my children? Could they influence what I believe? Could they make decisions about me? And could they access my intellectual property that I never intended for them to have? 

The question we really need to be understanding is, do I actually understand what happens to this data after I hit enter? And what could it mean if it ended up in the wrong hands?

 Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the Intentional Money Show. If you’re ready for more profit, come find me on Instagram at clare_wood_coach. Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast, and I’ll chat to you again next week

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio