As technology companies like Google Inc. blaze new trails with services like Street View or products like the wearable computer Google Glass, personal privacy sometimes suffers as collateral damage, as it did when a Google engineer collected private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks during the Street View mapping project.

“One of the problems in the tech world is [that] it is often portrayed that there is a dichotomy, a choice, between innovation and privacy,” says John Simpson, privacy project director at Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization.

According to Simpson, companies would do well to remember that privacy-friendly technologies played a big role in creating the digital world we live in today. Developments such as encryption allowed users to feel secure in giving their credit card numbers to businesses online without fear of them being intercepted, and allowed for more commerce to be conducted via the Internet.

Nowadays, considering growing public concern about what big technology companies such as Google and Facebook are doing with user data, “companies that wanted to compete with privacy-friendly products could well have advantages with consumers,” Simpson says.

As technology companies like Google Inc. blaze new trails with services like Street View or products like the wearable computer Google Glass, personal privacy sometimes suffers as collateral damage, as it did when a Google engineer collected private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks during the Street View mapping project.

“One of the problems in the tech world is [that] it is often portrayed that there is a dichotomy, a choice, between innovation and privacy,” says John Simpson, privacy project director at Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization.

According to Simpson, companies would do well to remember that privacy-friendly technologies played a big role in creating the digital world we live in today. Developments such as encryption allowed users to feel secure in giving their credit card numbers to businesses online without fear of them being intercepted, and allowed for more commerce to be conducted via the Internet.

Nowadays, considering growing public concern about what big technology companies such as Google and Facebook are doing with user data, “companies that wanted to compete with privacy-friendly products could well have advantages with consumers,” Simpson says.