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I wonder, how much my personal information is actually worth? The stuff you have at least? And if I were to approve it for the sale, what would be my cut of that value be? As surely I deserve it?


There's some napkin math in this article[1].

User data is worth much, much more than the the value users extract from "free" services. Especially considering this data is sold continually and perpetually. It doesn't just get purged from the market when the user stops using the service, and it's even bought and sold if the user never signed up for the service (shadow profiles).

We should definitely receive a fraction of these profits, or at the very least have control over the price and terms of sale.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/10/30/sh...


According to the Equifax Data Breach Settlement Fund,

it's worth $5.21: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279700


On one hand it seems like a lot. On the other, it indicates that those companies are actually horribly bad at making use of it. Which kinda tracks.




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