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
Lets take amazon for example.
You search for books for self-help regarding mental health issues, gambling and debt on your amazon account. Amazon sells your search history. They also sell your purchase history but without any identifying information (order X for $100 on XX, order Y for $200 on YY, order Z for $500 on ZZ). They do however say it’s for the same account. Obviously you don’t know who that is.
Unless say your credit card company buys the data and matches the transaction totals and dates. Now your CC company knows about potential mental health issues, gambling and you’re likely concerned about debt.
Stuff like this is called de-anonymizing and is done regularly so what is sold can actually be linked to a specific person. Now imagine if healthcare/insurance did this (and they do.) Corporations will do **anything** to increase profits which means getting money from consumers (advertising in a way to get them addicted to something) or reducing costs to consumers (canceling insurance because of some stupid reason when internally it’s because they knew you were a high-risk before presenting)
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