http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324096404578354533010958940.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

I wonder if this changes our discussion about voluntarily selling or leasing out personal information. Would my asking price change if I knew that by giving you X, i'm really giving you 10X? Is there any way for me to truly know the extent of what you can do with X?

-- AndrewReich - 12 Mar 2013

Andrew,

Great article, thanks for it!

An interesting somewhat related article can be found here. this discusses many things, including that facebook tracks your data every time you visit another website that has a facebook "like" or similar button on it at least as long as you are logged into your facebook account. Given that many people don't always log themselves out of facebook, this means that facebook has a significant amount of data on what websites you have been visiting. The article suggests that approximately 50% of web browsers are logged onto facebook.

When you apply this avalanche of information to the data-harvesting technologies you mentioned, it can lead to some scary results.

I think the biggest problem in knowing whether its X or 10X is first making the other parties accountable for their actions. Also mentioned in the article I linked above is the practical difficulty in holding these companies accountable -- it is very difficult to keep track of all of them and what they are doing. A first step would be to sensibly regulate what they can do in a manner that permits us to audit their behavior.

-- SamuelDostart - 18 Mar 2013