The Illusion of Control

Way back in 2004, one of the world’s largest soft drinks company pulled their “pure” bottled water product off the shelves because it had been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical. In July 2010, a major tobacco maker admitted that child workers as young as 10 were working in tobacco farms related to them. Now in March 2018, a whistleblower (& thorough investigation) helped show that a data analytics firm might have abused data leak from the world’s largest Social Network.

While it might look inappropriate to compare the above three cases, it is worthy to note that they could have just got away with it, if not for some really gritty people/ media working behind the scenes helping to identify and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Eventually when it comes to lawsuits, be it a major corporation exploiting children living in poor nations or a renowned firm causing health hazard, very little was done (or will be done) to punish big companies. In fact, large firms have the tendency to march on and make their brands even more powerful than before. End of the day, more harm will come to the economy (at least in the short term) by closing them entirely.

In case of the data leak you are more closely impacted no matter how insignificant you think you are and, if you have not realised it already, the best candidate to do damage control should a similar case arise in the immediate future.

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