“As We Grow, It Will Become a Priority”: American Mobile Start-Ups’ Privacy Practices

Abstract

Privacy has become a crucial issue of the digital age, with significant social, political, and economic ramifications. A growing body of literature has dedicated to the patterns, causes, and consequences of individuals’ privacy concerns, skills, and practices. Advancing a producer’s perspective, this research draws on in-depth interviews with 45 tech entrepreneurs to examine privacy practices of mobile start-ups in the United States. Results reveal (a) factors that contribute to the problematic status of privacy issues and (b) whether and how entrepreneurs leverage privacy management as a competitive advantage. Results show that data are widely seen by entrepreneurs as a potentially profitable asset. Privacy practices are networked and thus pose challenges for privacy management as different parties may have different privacy practices. Fast-moving technologies often leave government regulations behind, making them look outdated or irrelevant to many entrepreneurs. For most start-ups not specialized in identity, privacy, or anonymity service, privacy is neither a core business strategy nor a top concern. Only a few mobile ventures have leveraged privacy management as a competitive advantage and designed their products from the ground up concerned about privacy. Most entrepreneurs adopt a building-the-plane-while-flying-it approach: as business grows, privacy policies and practices would evolve. Many entrepreneurs fail to recognize the significance of privacy policies and practices as they lack the awareness, bandwidth, and capacity. Growth and monetization pressures from investors are perceived as more urgent and important than privacy and security issues. Offering a richer account of the power structure that shapes mobile entrepreneurs’ privacy practices and their challenges of managing privacy in a data-driven digital economy, our work advances the existing literature dominated by stories of the individual consumers.

Why Zoom Is Not Doomed Yet: Privacy and Security Crisis Response in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 outbreak have exacerbated this issue as they dramatically accelerated remote work and learning. Privacy and security breaches are rampant across industries ( Chen et al, 2018 ). Many tech firms have reported major data breaches or have been exposed for dubious privacy practices such as collecting, analyzing, or sharing personally identifiable information for millions of users with third parties.…”

“…A growing subset of privacy literature has been dedicated to the patterns, causes, and consequences of individual users’ privacy concerns, motivations, skills, and behaviors, drawing on privacy management theory ( Metzger, 2007 ; Petronio, 2013 ), privacy calculus theories, or digital inequality theories ( Chen & Chen, 2015 ; Huang et al, 2018 ; Li et al, 2018 ; Park, 2013 ). By contrast, a producer’s perspective examines the issue from the standpoint of industrial and institutional actors such as governments, corporations, media, advocacy groups, and user communities shaping privacy and security issues ( Chen et al, 2018 ). A producer’s perspective thus can shed light on the networks involved in the production and development of privacy and security practices.…”

“…Interviews with 45 tech startups in the United States show that many entrepreneurs lacked the awareness, bandwidth, or capacity to treat privacy as a core business strategy or a top concern. Instead, most entrepreneurs adopt a build-the-plane-while-flying-it approach, adapting privacy policies and practices as the environment changes ( Chen et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Besides the strategies illustrated through the lens of organizational crisis communication, a producer’s perspective of privacy management helps to shed light on how privacy and security practices involve a network of stakeholders. Tech startups often rely on professional and organizational networks to learn how to develop privacy policies and practices ( Chen et al, 2018 ). It was thus interesting to observe how Zoom promptly developed and showcased a collaborative network of privacy and security experts stocked with newly hired top executives, consultants, and clients with global name recognition.…”

Open Finance in Latin America and the Caribbean: Great Opportunities, Large Challenges

“…The financial consumer becomes crucial in deciding whether to share their data and with whom. Recent literature shows that giving control and ownership of consumers' data to the consumers increases data sharing in the whole financial system (Chen et al, 2018). In conclusion, the role of data is becoming more critical within the financial system, and new providers such as TPPs are changing the game.…”