Each month, the MIT SMR Strategy Forum poses a single question to our panel of experts in the fields of business, economics, and management. This month’s question asks our panel whether privacy concerns will limit businesses’ use of consumer data.

Many ethical, lawfully managed businesses have consumer data they aren’t legally authorized to possess, obtained from a surprising source: their customers, who inadvertently share the personal data of family, friends, and colleagues. And in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the enactment of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, peer-dependent privacy is emerging as a critical consideration for businesses.

Digital titans with access to large quantities of data are a challenge to competition. To maintain a competitive business environment, regulation focusing on both market and data dominance needs to be developed. Among the best tools for limiting companies’ influence: data audits.

New emotion-sensing technologies can help employees make better decisions, improve concentration, alleviate stress, and adopt healthier and more productive work styles. But companies must address important privacy issues.

The 2017 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium explores how organizations can respond to data security breaches.

Efforts by advertisers to attract attention are not new. What’s different with the web, author Tim Wu says, is the extent to which individuals are willing to open their lives to advertisers and trade away their time and private information for having the world at their fingertips. This creates unprecedented opportunities for manipulation.

What’s happening this week at the intersection of management and technology: how to avoid digital black swans; partnering with early-stage startups; the trouble with wearables.

New research shows that mobile advertising targeted to consumers based on their locations can be effective. This is particularly the case with customers who have shown a high level of interest in the type of product being shown to them. Researchers also think that some users might simply need more time to evaluate the trustworthiness of an app or offer — suggesting that marketers might see delayed responses to location targeted mobile ads.

In the weeks following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency’s domestic spying network taps the electronic and telephone communiqués of so many Americans, consumers have intensified their concerns about corporate complicity in government data snooping. That leads to the question: Are we at the beginning of a consumer backlash that will stymie data-sharing? Or is it inevitable that we’re moving into a new era of diminished privacy?

How many privacy policy updates does your credit card company send you each year? Companies often “manage privacy” and “keep consumers informed” by drafting their privacy policies as broadly as possible and consider their job done if they change the policy 10 times a year to fit with changing practices. However, managing privacy should not be seen by businesses as a burden. Instead, it can be a valuable way to generate and maintain a good relationship with your customers.

Remember geography lessons in school, painstakingly memorizing the longest rivers, cultures of various regions, the state capitals? For most of us, those lessons are in the past. But in the world of big data analytics, geography is making a comeback. The relatively new market of location analytics is expanding the uses of more traditional geographic information system (GIS) technology to include social, geographic, physical and emotional indicators that help organizations better predict trends

In their forthcoming book, Kord Davis and Doug Patterson argue that there isn’t yet an ethical framework or common vocabulary for having productive discussions around the ethical use of big data.

Do you know how much data is being collected about you at any given time by any given organization? Concerns about privacy in the new era of big data are making the rounds at many companies and being discussed by universities, governments and global institutions. This blogpost discusses some of the major privacy concerns about big data, how to address them and has a special focus on Equifax, the credit company that has 800 billion records with details on 500 million consumers and 81 million businesses in 17 countries.

New research suggests that ads that complement online content can be effective — but not if they rouse consumers’ privacy concerns.

Companies want people to shop online, but they have yet to ease many consumers’ fears about doing business through the Internet.