You’ve probably seen those payday loan businesses in strip malls across the United States. They’re small one or two room places with a desk and some crappy chairs and ridiculously gaudy signs. If you haven’t seen them, you have probably heard of their reputation as predatory lenders. They’ll give people a loan at an insanely high interest rate against the person’s next paycheck, and tend to lock people in a cycle of debt that is very hard to get out of. While these places are bad, they have nothing on what goes on in India on a regular basis.
Over in the Asian subcontinent, they handle this sort of thing digitally and there are too many different lending apps to keep track of. In essence, they operate on a similar model to the American payday loan companies. They offer small, short-term loans at a high interest rate against the next paycheck. The similarities end there though. While American companies charge an average of 20% interest, their Indian counterparts often charge an interest rate of 80% or more. They also charge their victims in another way – the lender demands access to all their data. So to get $40 at an 80% interest, you have to grant the lender’s app access to all the data on your phone.
So what happens if you can’t pay? Does the company cut their loss and consider the data as payment? No. Not even close. They actually start harassing their victims. Calling and texting over 1000 times a day in some cases. Some people make use of multiple lending apps, making the problem even worse.
I’ve used the term ‘victim’ twice now. That’s a pretty strong word and not to be thrown around lightly. Yet, it is perfectly appropriate here. With that kind of harassment, it is driving many to suicide, and straining every relationship the victim has as he struggles to figure out how to get out of this debt. They are also victims because often the terms of the app are in English which not everyone can read fluently, and even if they can, just like lenders here, the loan agent will do whatever he can to convince the victim that they can handle the loan without any problem, they have full confidence it will get paid back on time.
There have even been some companies that would hire professional harassers to stand outside of a victim’s home or business and scream at and berate them for hours on end. Small wonder that some would be driven to suicide and no doubt to crime in a desperate effort to make the yelling and the phone calls stop.
To add insult to injury, even after the loan is paid off, the lender still has access to the victim’s data, allowing them to increase their profits by collecting and selling it to third parties until the phone gets replaced.
All of this has been made worse over the last year as many people throughout India have lost their jobs thanks to the response to COVID. Millions have found themselves going from working hard to get a little ahead to desperately scrambling to scrape by. Its left these people open and vulnerable to predators who have no regard for the people they are hurting while they are getting rich.
One way the Indian people can work towards ending this ridiculous cycle is to sign up with TARTLE. You can protect your data with us without giving us access to it. In fact, we never see our users’ data. We just give them the means to protect it. Once signed up, you can share your data on your own terms and make a little money in the process. Control over your data, financial compensation, and no harassment. That’s what TARTLE offers.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
We have come a long way in how we use data to manage our businesses and make decisions for our lives. Once upon a not very long time ago businesses would set their product goals for the day with a marker. Seriously. The boss would walk out to wherever finished product was stacked and draw a line on the wall. If the product stacked that high by the end of the day, they were good. As you can imagine, that was more than a little inefficient. The goal may be so high it couldn’t possibly be reached or it would be so low that the employees would reach their goal with hours left in the day and then take it easy until quitting time. So everyone was either stressed out or just not getting a whole lot done. Either way, the available resources weren’t getting used effectively.
At the same time, there is an awful lot of subjectivity without data. If the boss, whether it be the regional manager at the cereal plant or a colonel in the Air Force, shows up and asks how things are the aren’t likely to reveal any problems. Should the big boss stick around, the employees will put on a huge dog and pony show, making sure that he sees everything he wants to see and hears everything he wants to hear. In the end, the big boss likely leaves with a completely false picture of the way things get done on a daily basis. This situation helps no one.
These days we have made a lot of progress in collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data. That’s because we’ve realized that data is basically gold and the better you understand the data, the more gold you have. Getting that data takes work though. Like gold, it needs to mined, processed and formed in order to turn it into a useful product.
The need to mine data in the workplace has been made greater than ever by the response to COVID-19. Thanks to improvements made in the availability of broadband access it became possible to have many, in some cases, all of a workforce work from home. The full ramifications of this will take years to manifest and lots of data will be needed to determine how to structure the workforce going forward. Obvious places that businesses will be looking to see where they can increase their productivity will be if they actually need to keep spending money on those massive office buildings or they are better off keeping people working from home. For those who are already spending their work days at home, businesses will be looking for ways to ensure that people actually are getting the work done that they are supposed to be doing, or if the opportunity exits to increase productivity.
Related to that is the way that data sharing has increased as a result of so many people working from home. With everyone working in their own departments and separate groups, the temptation to guard your own information and keep it siloed off from others is often too great. Any time people can’t access data within a company, their ability to make good decisions is impeded which in turn reduces the company’s efficiency overall. Now, more and more information is being shared via the cloud, which means first, that it is easier than ever to share data and second, that the expectations to do so are greater. Integrating data is also recognized as being more necessary than ever before to both help the company adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and keeping a now dispersed workforce engaged.
Naturally, the best way to get the necessary data is to go to the source, to work with individuals to find out what work process works best for them, to learn how they are working in this new environment. In this way, companies can learn from those who are doing the best job of adapting and help those who may be struggling. A business need not even confine itself to working with their own employees. With TARTLE’s data marketplace any business can log in and find people willing to share exactly the kind of data they are looking for. Going to the source will help these businesses adjust their policies and expectations in the best way to benefit not just the bottom line but their employees as well.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
