Why do companies buy and sell your information? What do they do with it
In: Economics
So google today knows – at every periodic interval – how many people searched for “buy engine oil for toyota car”. They also know different aspects of these people groups – for example they know the age profile, gender, location, likes and dislikes, past activities, past purchases, recent interests etc. Much of this information is anonymized in a way that it is pinned to certain groups rather than individuals.
Now if you own a engine oil filter company – you might want this data from google. This will help you create a heat map – showing which locations, age groups etc. should you target for your product. Based on the data analysis – you may create an online / offline campaign to sell your oil filters to these people (who will start seeing your advertisements on their feed when they search online for oil change / engine oil etc).
This is a relatively innocent example. The same data can be used to target people with specific “agenda” messages – like anti-vax, brexit, voter fraud etc. So now you know that the data itself is like a knife – neither dangerous nor beneficial – it is the use / user of that data that makes it dangerous or beneficial.
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