Every time we use a fitness tracker, or swipe a loyalty card, or check in at the gym, or search Google, we create data. That data doesn’t just disappear — entities can access it for reasons we may never learn about. Here’s a news report about insurers and employers using data from an app designed for women to track their pregnancy. The article indicates employers, “under the banner of corporate wellness have aggressively pushed to gather more data about their workers’ lives than ever before.”
What does the implications of the ready availability of this kind of data mean for personal privacy? And how should researchers and IRBs consider studies’ privacy and confidentiality, given that being alive and breathing just about guarantees you are creating data?