Can You Lot Brand Coin Selling Your Data?

Questions the BBC is/are* asking, Sept. 21:

Tech giants brand billions from our information – why can't nosotros exercise the same? Sam Harrison tries out companies which pay for personal information, alongside varying results.

Companies are selling our information as well as making billions doing so. So, why shouldn’t nosotros motion into on the act?

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, firms get got scrambled to comply alongside the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, inwards Europe at least. But the harm is already done. Our personal information is out there, as well as nosotros get got lost command of it.

But what if in that place was a way to hook some of that command dorsum – as well as brand some coin inwards the process?

Moneyspinner?
New companies are emerging, claiming they tin lastly give us the gamble to seize dorsum some ownership of our personal information. By cutting out the middleman as well as offering to a greater extent than transparency – as well as a gamble to turn a profit – they country they desire to give users the way to monitor how their ain information is used inwards a way that tech giants exercise not.

I similar the sentiment of selling my ain data. If the promises are true, I volition live able to command who uses it (and how). Plus, I’d live earning coin from something that until straight off I’d been giving away for free. I decided to investigate: could my stats live a viable, untapped income?

I focus on companies that arrive possible for me to earn coin conduct away. Many of the firms I constitute are but starting out, similar Ocean Protocol, which launches to the populace inwards early on 2019 as well as volition offering a “data telephone substitution protocol to unlock information for artificial intelligence”. Another is Datacoup, which isn’t currently opened upward to novel users signing up. Permission.io volition pay users inwards ASK tokens, the company’s ain cryptocurrency, to sentinel advertisements. But at the 2nd in that place is no way to convert these ASK into non-crypto assets. Since it wasn’t possible to brand coin alongside this bunch yet, I create upward one's hear to focus on 3 where I can.

Quiz master
One tried-and-true way of making coin from your “data” is yesteryear filling out online surveys. Most of us accept business office inwards online quizzes for fun every straight off as well as and therefore – why non answer questions close myself for money? One firm, CitizenMe, claims to offering “real-life value from your life online” yesteryear paying users to answer quizzes close themselves. I accept a quiz called “Does your information get got value?”. I’m hoping it does – that’s why I’m here.

At 10p, I’ve maxed out my earning potential. Not the most promising starting fourth dimension

Most of the people I cite this experiment to had a knee-jerk reaction against it – their instinct was that nosotros demand less of our information floating roughly the internet, non more. And although this quiz volition assemble a speck of information dust compared to the mountains of information Facebook has close me, handing over my information to a companionship similar CitizenMe – deliberately, no less – seems similar an unnecessary extra risk....MORE

*I (still) get got problems deciding if corporations are plural. I know a companionship of people is/are plural but never got over corporate personhood (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886) as well as yesteryear straight off it's in all probability every bit good late.

Possibly related:

ICYMI: What's The Actual Cash Value Of Data Collection?

Spoiler alert: It's less than information geeks would retrieve but provides plenty of an border to determine long-run success or failure inwards a divulge of industries. More later the jump.

From FT Alphaville:...

Selling Data, Buying Data, Data Science News