The data-mining game and what you need to know

Safaricom Newsroom

Issues around the collection and protection of personal data have gained traction over the past two years. Everyone who comes into contact with personal data has a responsibility to ensure the data is used for what it was intended for but also well stored.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the personal information that you share in order to access buildings where your name, ID number and phone number are collected?

Or those offer messages you get from restaurants and e-commerce shops, a few weeks after you pay for a product or service.

You may ignore one message but then there is another one the next week and the week after that and the messages get irritating. All you wanted to do, you think, is pay for your meal, a product or a service. You didn’t sign up for this, you say.

These complaints have not only become common but frequent with social media users raising concern of the wanton abuse of the access to personal information institutions have. Questions abound: how is my personal information stored and who has access to it?

Writing in the Business Daily about it, Francis Monyango, dubbed the situation “a big data-mining game” and explained why and how the phenomenon has come about.

Kenya is among countries that have sought to regulate the access and use of personal data and has enacted the Data Protection Act. This has brought not only more focus on the role individuals and institutions have in keeping peoples’ personal information including what these institutions can and cannot do with it.

In this month’s Safaricom Newsroom podcast, Eunice Kilonzo has a conversation with Francis, his colleague Mutindi Muema and Sharon Holi, the Head of Customer Privacy at Safaricom on everything Data Protection.

Listen below.