Wednesday, May 2, 2012

A Stock Exchange for Your Personal Data


From the article: "In a paper posted online last week, Huberman and coauthor Christina Aperjis propose something akin to a New York Stock Exchange for personal data. A trusted market operator could take a small cut of each transaction and help arrive at a realistic price for a sale…

On his proposed market, a person who highly values her privacy might chose an option to sell her shopping patterns for $10, but at a big risk of not finding a buyer. Alternately, she might sell the same data for a guaranteed payment of 50 cents. Or she might opt out and keep her privacy entirely…. Huberman is not the first to investigate a personal data marketplace, and there would seem to be significant barriers—like how to get companies that already collect data for free to participate. But, he says, since the pricing options he outlines gauge how a person values privacy and risk, they address at least two big obstacles to making such a market function." Read more

See also
Aperjis, Christina and Bernardo A. Huberman. "A Market for Unbiased Private Data: Paying Individuals According to their Privacy Attitudes." HP Labs, April 26, 2012