The Stack Overflow Podcast Why is it so hard for companies to protect your privacy?
Feb 18, 2025
Min Nguyen, VP of Engineering at Transcend and an expert in data privacy, shares insights into the complexities of protecting user data. He dives into the challenges companies face with consent management and regulatory compliance, highlighting the need for user control over personal data. The conversation touches on the intricacies of data tracking in web transactions and the importance of transparent data handling. Nguyen also emphasizes the impact of AI on privacy, advocating for a collaborative engineering culture to address these pressing issues.
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Data Privacy Challenges
- Data privacy is a growing concern due to increasing regulations and public demand for control over personal information.
- Companies struggle to balance user privacy with the need to collect and utilize data for product improvement and marketing.
Manual Privacy Management
- Small companies can manage privacy manually, but as data volume and usage grow, this becomes infeasible.
- Manual processing isn't cost-effective and cannot handle hundreds of vendors and thousands of databases.
Prioritizing Privacy
- Companies handling sensitive data, especially B2C products with marketing teams, must prioritize data privacy.
- Start by manually assessing privacy risks and then determine whether automation is necessary for a robust, up-to-date data map.