There’s a saying that data is the new oil(new window) because of how valuable it is to the digital economy. But what’s the value of your data, personally? Depending where you live, information about you could be worth at least several hundred dollars a year to Facebook and Google alone.
For someone living in the United States, your data generated over $600 in revenue for just those two companies last year, according to our analysis of their regulatory filings. (We explain how we reached this number below.)
That doesn’t include the income you generate for other ad tech companies, data brokers, internet service providers, dark web marketplaces, and any number of other entities that leach profit out of your behaviors and attributes.
I’ve often said that I wouldn’t mind corps skimming my data, IF they gave me a cut. But they don’t, and that’s why I’m on Lemmy, Pixelfed, support FOSS, use script blockers, and other methods to minimize my exposure to them, and yet still participate is this lovely intarweb we’ve created.
I sell some info by using a cashback app. Since my purchase habits are swooped up anyhow
Wow, that’s much higher than I expected honestly. Figured it was maybe half or a third of that.
That doesn’t include the income you generate for other ad tech companies, data brokers, internet service providers, dark web marketplaces…
How are my activities on the dark web valuable if I’m anonymous?
I think they meant your info being sold on dark web markets, not your behaviour on the dark web being sold.
I guess because of hacks? It’s not like Facebook is selling data on tor. This point doesn’t make much sense.
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Getting people to attach a(ny) value to it is the biggest hurdle by far. I think the complacent attitude is part genuine incapacity in dealing with abstraction (what is a data profile anyway? How is knowledge of my purchase history a risk to me?) and part exceptionalism/denial. People like this tend never to think in terms of power dynamics.
Your data is valuable. And that’s exactly why you should keep it safe by using privacy-focused services.
Not by using privacy-focused services, but by not letting the data to reside on others’ hard disk.
