Obviously sensitive information like addresses, credit cards, etc. should be protected, but I don’t understand why it’s considered a big deal when companies sell other data? Don’t they just sell things like how much time you spent staring at a picture before you scrolled?
In: Technology
Well, it’s extremely creepy, and leads to situation such as [this](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/). Creepy is in the eye of the beholder, though, so I won’t go any deeper into that. Let’s go into a bit more concrete stuff instead.
First off, the whole concept of “free market” has some baked in assumptions. One is that both sides have perfect information. That is, we both have access to the same information that is relevant to the transaction we’re making. Companies have much more information than consumers, which is why we need regulations around labels and such. If companies can buy consumer data wholesale when their own data isn’t readily available, it just makes that information difference even worse.
Second, who is allowed to use that data, and what for? When your bank tells you that “computer says no” to your loan application, are they basing that decision on data they bought from somebody else? Who validated that the data is correct? If it’s wrong, who’s responsible for fixing it?
Third, what happens when you buy data from multiple places, and put it all together? Information that was considered sensitive and wasn’t present in any of the individual sources can often be deduced from the combination of all sources.
The list goes on. It’s a _very_ complex issue that kind of just explodes into a bazillion problems like these when you start digging into it. You can either try to fix them, or you just say “let’s just not sell personal data at all”.
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