I wrote about Turn It In two years ago. It has an incredibly strong business model. They collect homework and match it against their database for plagerism.
Rumor reached me today that my local public high school is pressuring some segments of the student body to use the system.
TurnItIn is privately held. Go ahead, think about it. Who would be the most frightening owner.
“As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy businesses or assets, or Turnitin might be acquired by another company. In any of those circumstances, personal information in our databases may be included among the transferred assets.” Who would want to buy it?
“We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Pledge at any time.” Looks like they are keeping their options open.
If you want to see the interesting activity in the online identity and privacy industry the things to watch are the weak: prisoners, students, animals, products.
I give up. Who would be the most frightening owner? The only answer I can come up with is very generic: someone who would “abuse” the gathered information. However, I can’t limit the possible owners of that label to either the private or public sector. Furthermore, I don’t really know how one would fully define “abuse,” either. There’s a lot of nuance involved in information use.
Oh, and how to animals and products factor in the the “identity” or “privacy” discussion?