RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
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A FOCUS ON DATA PRIVACY A compelling research project investigating pitfalls in competition and digital privacy has already made an impact. The team of Professor Chongwoo Choe, who is the Director of the Centre for Global Business, with Associate Professor Zhijun Chen and senior lecturer Chengsi Wang reached an audience of three million people after global media outlets reported their concern around the merger of fitness software firm Fitbit with tech giant Google. The researchers joined 15 other global researchers in submitting a legal brief to the European Commission’s competition authority to raise the alarm on behalf of unsuspecting global consumers. The controversial merger prompted the team’s research topic, ‘Big data: implications for competition, privacy and regulation’ which was awarded a $266,000 Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant. Access to richer data sets means firms can better tailor their products. But consumers can be exploited through unscrupulous use of health and wellness data.
Chongwoo Choe
“Sensitive health data held by Fitbit can be added to users’ personal profiles Google aggregates from its other services such as emails, maps and online searches,” explains Professor Choe. “While Google says it would not use Fitbit data for advertising purposes, this does not rule out Google’s use of the data in other markets such as healthcare.” This project is among ARC Discovery Project grants totalling almost $1 million awarded to Monash Business School researchers. Another successful recipient was Dr Rohan Sweeney from the Centre for Health Economics, awarded $349,127 for his project, ‘Maximising impacts of aid by incorporating local priorities’. Dr Ayushi Bajaj from the Department of Economics was awarded $347,889 for her project, ‘Global economic uncertainty, liquidity and monetary policy in Australia’.
