How much is your private data worth?

By Roberto Reuter 24 February 2021 Updated on 14 September 2021

we are putting information out there, and that information should still be ours.

That is what Andrew Yang told the New York Times in a recently published piece:

“If somebody is profiting from our data and we decide willingly to partner with a company that’s making use of this information, then that’s only fair as long as we get a slice. […] Right now we’re unaware of the value that’s changing hands and we’re definitely not getting a data check in the mail every season.”

Andrew Yang

New York Times

A universal income may not be sustainable – but being paid for our personal data is.

Marketers have long searched for ways to best reach their potential customers. For decades they have sliced and diced sample audiences, looking for formulas within demographics. Social media created opportunities to go deeper: first to analyse crowds in more depth, and now to go extremely deep on individuals before loading them into psychological profiles that determine what they are most likely to buy.

So doesn’t it make sense that I should get paid every time

Facebook, for example, which already holds 300,000 points of personal data on me, sells that data? Personal data as a commodity has now surpassed oil in value. Why don’t I get a piece of that? It wouldn’t be difficult. Every time an ad is served up to me, I should get a percentage of the price it costs to place it. A quick check of my ClearWEB browser shows that 30,000 ads have already been blocked this year. Should marketers be paying me to talk to them? Let’s say they paid ten cents for each time I had to see an ad (and yes, some of them I do want to see). That would be roughly 3,000 dollars a year. That buys a lot of groceries.

What if I chose the kinds of ads

I want to see because I am in the market for those products? Advertising budgets are always being scrutinised for effectiveness. So what if I am in the market for a car and I create a profile: male, over 50, income over 75,000 dollars a year, good credit, looking for an SUV. What would an advertiser pay per ad to engage me in a product discussion? 5 dollars for 5 minutes? 10 dollars for 20 minutes? The profit on cars is astounding, something in the region of 6,000 dollars per vehicle. So since I am not sitting in a dealership, give me 2,000 dollars off. And pay me 25 dollars just to listen to your pitch. That seems fair.

The same should apply to household appliances, holidays,

all kinds of insurance and every piece of clothing I’m interested in – especially shoes. By valuing ourselves as a commodity, we are able to earn a share of the advertising budget. We deserve to be paid the value we represent to the company selling to us. But first we have to own our personal data; we need control over which parts of it we want to monetise and which we want to keep private. And we have to change the way we think about personal data – it is our own personal natural resource. We just have to harness it. Take a look at the innovations at ClearID.

Source

https://news.clear.co.com/how-much-is-your-personal-data-worth/ (English original)

As founder of the ClearFOUNDATION, Michael Proper is a pioneer in the field of privacy protection. Out of this idea, his team developed the ClearPHONE. It makes privacy private again. The ClearOS operating system is based on Android and is constantly being developed further. I have been following its development since meeting Michael Proper in person in 2018 and since the crowdfunding started in 2020, and I am a happy user of the phone.

What is a ClearPHONE? What makes it so different?

“ClearPHONE gives you control to block malware, ads, cookies, trackers, and backdoors to make your phone yours again.” ClearPHONE differences At the back of our minds we have long known that a great deal of content on the internet is purely promotional, sometimes unsuitable for our children, usually lurking just around the corner, presenting itself invitingly everywhere and always just a few taps away.