
The Dark Market for Personal Data - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/opinion/the-dark-market-for-personal-data.html?_r=3&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Versioning
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otoburb
>These problems can’t be solved with existing law. The Federal Trade
Commission has strained to understand personal data markets — a $156-billion-
a-year industry [...]

It kills me that this is a $156B/yr industry, yet asymptotically zero of the
money paid for various lists are going to the actual individuals whose
information is being bought, whether mundane emails or more detailed profile
attributes.

The adage "if I had a penny for every time ..." would seem to align various
parties' incentives. Perhaps somebody should release a product based on the
underlying premise that some emails tied to some shadow of your identity will
inevitably be sold, so might as well set a floor price of "a couple of cents"
as per the article and watch in bittersweet resignation as the pennies flow
in.

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tjr
So with about 7 billion people on the planet, on average our personal data is
worth about $22/year? Rather than getting that $22 sent to me directly, can I
_pay_ $22/year and opt out?

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cwkoss
The problem is marketers would then be only interested in those with enough
disposable income to pay the opt out fee.

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valar_m
Both this article, and the Washington Post article it links to strongly imply
that the Arkansas woman's credit was wrecked as a result of incorrect
information about a drug conviction, but none of the three main credit bureaus
report criminal convictions on credit reports.[0]

The author argues for his second reason that data brokers should be regulated
because "many of the lists have no business being in the hands of retailers,
bosses or banks," yet he fails to make any logical connection between the
reason he gives and the regulations he wants. Ignoring for a moment the
complete absence of evidence or facts to support his claim, his argument fails
the most basic scrutiny -- his reason has nothing to do with regulating data
brokers.

The segue from personality tests -- an odd digression, to say the least --
into hand wringing over the possibility of employers secretly using lists
based on health conditions is just absurd. Enacting regulations to address a
problem we have literally never seen happen is the essence of bureaucratic
incompetence.

It only becomes truly spectacular when you consider that regulating the
company that sells the data does nothing to prevent employers from doing it
anyway.

[0] [https://www.privacyrights.org/how-private-my-credit-
report](https://www.privacyrights.org/how-private-my-credit-report)

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Jedd
Several years ago I worked for a company that was in the market of marketing
these kinds of data.

Broadly speaking they had three types of data (which happened to correlate
chronologically as they looked around for ways to generate revenue). I
recognise that the first two aren't really what this article is about.

First, data contributed directly by users (through personality quizzes,
typically)

Second, performing lookalikes based on web accesses to sites they were able to
track (beacons were installed on a surprising number of large, popular sites).

Third, linking these data with some private credit bureaus' records - the link
was in two directions.

It meant they could do very targeted advertising - putting car adverts in the
browser of someone who'd written off their car (which could be determined by
them having just filed a insurance claim).

The other direction was fascinating - subjecting credit seekers to quizzes in
order to contribute to the determination (still made by the credit offerer,
natch) of whether the would-be customer was a good or bad risk.

Very early on there had been talk of being a portal for users to opt in or out
of being tracked and analysed in these ways, offering this as a free service
to users, while on the flip-side offering people actual money for opting in.
This area was explored in some detail, including building a web service to
demonstrate to people how much they were worth to advertisers based on (you
guessed it, a quiz) whether they were in the market for a car/house/insurance,
where they holidays, etc.

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lovemenot
As unpleasant as this industry is to my own sensitivities, I think it will
continue to thrive until it eventually burns itself out. This will happen as a
result of poor data quality and competition driving down prices in the race to
the bottom. Deliberate acts of mass data poisoning could hasten that day.

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preillyme
The idea of being dox'ed is so scary to me.

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srcmap
How are these prices compare to what one gets from Facebook?

:-)

