The woman was surprised. Yet a growing number of consumers know by now that when they get something for “free” in the digital world, they pay with a new currency—their personal data. This is the core business model of everything from “'free” email and search engines to social media and apps that track our exercise and health.
The companies behind these free services make fortunes selling access to us or selling our data directly to others, and we pay them with a currency we don’t know the worth of. What is a birthday worth, a political opinion, or a quest for parenthood or an illness?
Individuals are in the blind with this new currency because the inner workings of the market are completely opaque to us. Those who control the biggest troves of data are increasingly closed off about their doings (remember how, for example, Facebook rarely replies to a press request), while individuals, in general, are becoming more and more transparent.
Citizens revolt
Many of us have woken up to the fact that private life is no longer the default. We miss the lack of privacy (meaning the control of our own data) in the online infrastructure, and we are slowly beginning to understand the potential risks associated with losing control over our data: discrimination, missed opportunities, doxing, and a general creepy feeling of someone following our every move. The rapid increase in the use of ad blockers, fake data, and privacy tools, as well as a growing digital distrust evidenced in surveys (mostly from the U.S. and E.U.), offer clear evidence of growing consumer awareness.
