People are sharing more and more information about themselves but they do not feel so comfortable about the way their personal information and behavioral data are gathering. Is the sharing of information beneficial for consumers or has it just commercial purposes?
As exposed in this article, there are benefits for the customers even if our society talks more often about risks… Read more
People are sharing more and more information about themselves but they do not feel so comfortable about the way their personal information and behavioral data are gathering. Is the sharing of information beneficial for consumers or has it just commercial purposes?
As exposed in this article, there are benefits for the customers even if our society talks more often about risks and warnings about this sharing. We could hope that it would also lead to an upgrade of performance monitoring and a better understanding of the customer needs. Another benefice is the help it could bring for more security and safety to the society. The information resources could be used to stop crime and fraud.
However, I’m a little suspicious about the real use of our data’s in practice. For example, I doubt about a possible increasing of competition. I’m wondering if the customers would not have less incentive to look for others buyers due to the relationship created by the company, owner of their data’s. It is clear that the sharing would certainly reinforce fidelity and engagement with partners.
Concerning the price discrimination, I already came back on an e-commerce website where prices have increased since my last visit for the offers I was interested in. It’s typically the case for online air travel booking websites. I find it surprising but that makes sense now with the reading of this article that if I find the good more valuable, I have to pay more. If it allows to have an increasing in the total consumer welfare, then it is an interesting advantage.
I think that there is in fact a real confidence crisis about the use of personal data’s. In UK, for example, only 19% of the population understand the value of this sharing and accept to give information in return to best services. And only 8% of UK population share easily information thinking they are impersonal and are totally confident of their future use.
In conclusion, there are indeed possible benefits for the consumers to share personal information. I think that more transparency from companies could lead to more sharing. The consumers need to be more confident about the use of their data’s and to see that they still have control on them. The companies should explain clearly the use of our information and give us the opportunity to control and remove them whenever we want.
In this case, I think that the benefits could outweigh the costs of sharing information for consumers.
The article defend the idea that we may benefit from sharing our private information through the Internet. That is not necessarily a claim that I would have support. Indeed, I believe that privacy should be protected and it should be a right for everyone to be able to monitor its own information. Yet this article probably allowed me to broad… Read more
The article defend the idea that we may benefit from sharing our private information through the Internet. That is not necessarily a claim that I would have support. Indeed, I believe that privacy should be protected and it should be a right for everyone to be able to monitor its own information. Yet this article probably allowed me to broad my view as it seems that it might turns out to be benefit for us to share our private information. In this sense, I believe that there is a trade-off between two opposite aspects: on the one hand the benefit that I can experiment if I share private information. On the other hand, the lost I occur depending on the value I place on the privacy of my information.
What is clear is that the quick degradation of the privacy during the last years has raised questions and controversies about privacy. Here, I will try to gain an overview of the situation of some aspects and try to weigh the pros and cons.. For this, I will investigate some of the benefits pointed out in the article:
With the availability of information in today’s digital economy, companies have more information about their customers. Thus, they can easily target consumers and practice price discrimination. The article made the point that price-discrimination does not necessarily make the consumer worse-off. In think that if we want to form a good opinion, we must underline the fact that the effects of such price-discrimination practices will not have the same impact in the case of monopoly than in the case of competition (1) . The possession of more detailed information about consumers allows firms to extract more surplus from each consumer but there is a conflicting effect in the sense that it might also exacerbate the price competition. This later point ties up with the present article according to which “the absence of price discrimination does not necessarily imply lower prices”.
The access to private information also allows companies to set up targeted advertising. If I support the fact that price-discrimination may benefit the consumers, I have more troubles with the targeted advertising. The media agency MEC conducted a study on this theme: the question was to know up to which point consumers agree to scarify their own private information in order to receive advertising message that only respond to their real expectations. They showed that after they explained the purpose of targeted advertising, people appear more inclined to accept it (2). Well, I don’t think it would be my case.
People generally don’t have a good opinion about targeted advertising. According to the common perception, it seems good for firms but bad for consumers. Yet, it still seems important to raise two points (3) : First, targeted advertising may make the ads more relevant for consumers. Second, consumers can choose to use adverting-avoidance tools (ADblock,…). Nonetheless, I still see targeted advertising as something not desirable. Indeed, advertisers track my content, my preferences and what I do without my consent. And even if I can install tools like ADblock, I still consider this practice as something rather negative.
Despite everything, I truly believe that apart from all the economical aspects, the ethical aspect which affect the privacy must not be neglected.
The growing volume of data generated over the last years has brought about many discussions regarding digital privacy issues. Thus, the European Union has reformed its data protection legal framework in order to protect citizens and to regulate the environment for businesses (1). Indeed, whereas for companies it is obvious that the access to personal data is an important tool… Read more
The growing volume of data generated over the last years has brought about many discussions regarding digital privacy issues. Thus, the European Union has reformed its data protection legal framework in order to protect citizens and to regulate the environment for businesses (1). Indeed, whereas for companies it is obvious that the access to personal data is an important tool to improve targeting and segmenting customers and thus, increase long-term profits, for consumers the benefits are not always that evident and many consumers remain sceptical. However, there are some significant benefits for consumers in sharing their personal data which we will take a look at in the following part.
First of all, the access to personal data enables companies to improve customers’ digital experience. As mentioned in the article, consumers benefit from targeted advertising as it provides them with relevant information suited to their individual interests. In addition to that, contrary to common belief, price discrimination which is rendered possible due to better customer information, does not necessarily put consumers in a disadvantageous situation as some consumers will pay a lower price for a given good or service.
Besides this, the sharing of data enhances innovation. In fact, the availability of data has led to the creation of several services or technologies that we majorly enjoy for free, such as language translation tools or digital mapping technologies. On top of that, the access to information, especially customer information, enables companies to better respond to customers’ needs by improving their product or service resulting in an increased customer satisfaction. (2)
Moreover, a recent study has shown that consumers are actually willing to share their personal data provided they gain an added value. According to this study, two main factors determine if a consumer is willing to share his personal data or not, namely the trust he has in the company and the potential added value he gets from sharing his data. In other words, even protective consumers do not mind sharing their personal information as long as they benefit from relevant offers and value. (3)
To conclude, it is difficult to state if the benefits of sharing personal information outweigh the costs. Indeed, this really differs from one consumer to another as consumers do not share the same attitude towards privacy issues nor do they have the same virtual behaviour or activities and thus, do not gain the same value from sharing personal data. As far as I am concerned, I admit that until recently I have not given that much thought to what companies actually do with my private data. Today, even though there will always remain a certain fear that my personal data will fall in the wrong hands, I believe that I also benefit from companies’ access to personal data by having an improved customer experience. Indeed, I enjoy several digital services for free and I prefer getting information or advertisement which is aligned with my interests. Finally, despite being in favour of sharing personal data to some extent, I am convinced that a certain level of regulation is needed to ensure consumers’ protection.
As introduction, we can ask ourselves : « how did we get there ? ». I think that the most likely response to this question comes from the last progresses in information technology. In fact, these progresses and the transformation of the advanced economies into service economies have made possible for organizations to monitor, collect and analyze increasing amounts of… Read more
As introduction, we can ask ourselves : « how did we get there ? ». I think that the most likely response to this question comes from the last progresses in information technology. In fact, these progresses and the transformation of the advanced economies into service economies have made possible for organizations to monitor, collect and analyze increasing amounts of individual data (what they called the « Big Data »). Furthermore, the reduction of cost of storing information allow companies to record every details of each customer and his transactions. In this article, such different benefits from sharing private information are highlighted. Four techniques are explained : behavior-based price discrimination, targeted advertising, recommendation systems and single sign-on systems.
Other benefits can be drawn from letting online service providers accessing our personal data than those mentioned above in the article. Let’s take the example of target advertising to begin: understanding customers and their habits allows firms to save time and money in the sense that they do not insist on proposing ads and services to clients uninterested about their products. As a second example, it is shown in several articles that personal data also enable personalized pricing. However, consumers are often unwilling to accept being price discriminated for fear that they would end up paying more for the same product or service. Different studies demonstrate that by rewarding consumers for disclosing personal information it is possible to achieve a situation where first-degree price discrimination is mutually advantageous and both buyers and users gain by adopting such a pricing model.
In my personal opinion, we share today our personal information more easily than ever online. I think that this comes from the loss of difficulty to trust others by sharing personal data in exchange of more comfort. In fact, if we take the example of Facebook, we do it without realizing it. After signing up and giving any kind of personal data (age, sex, location, …) you are quickly invite to like some pages, to join some groups, to take part in different events, etc. The contents of our page and personal data allow Facebook to target ads. For instance, if I go on holidays on NY, Facebook will understand it and it will understand that I’m a traveler. The travel company will be able to say later “I want to target him for other long-distance trips” and Facebook will arrange ads for travelling in my personal page. This technique called “targeted advertising” (as explained in the article) allows Facebook to win more than 14 billion euros last year and a study shows that each user makes 11 euros for the “American Giant” every year. In my day-to-day life I’m often facing with this kind of activities mentioned above. Nevertheless, most of the time I do not disagree with the ads I receive on Facebook or others like Youtube, Google, …
In conclusion, we can say that everything we do on the web, from our social media interactions to our shopping on Amazon, is driven by complex mathematical formulae that are invisible, we can’t get away from that. All these analyses of personal data are implemented in order to increase welfare, lower search costs and reduce economic inefficiencies. However, one has to bear in mind that these activities can be a source of serious power imbalances between those who hold the data and those whose data is controlled.
What do you think? Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
Indeed, more and more of website use our private information. There are obviously good sides like bad sides. Even if the most of people are opposed from data use, there are not real solutions to avoid that. Pay for prevent this is one of them.… Read more
What do you think? Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
Indeed, more and more of website use our private information. There are obviously good sides like bad sides. Even if the most of people are opposed from data use, there are not real solutions to avoid that. Pay for prevent this is one of them. Also, people make a difference between personal information and behavioral data. In this case, behavioral data are less important than personal information (1). They are maybe more interested to protect their personal information than their data about behavior. But in my opinion I don’t ready to pay just for protect my information. The information that I put on Internet is not secret or very personal. They allow mainly websites to recommend me some products concerning research that I have made before. So, this sharing information allows me to increase the choices and improved the quality of my decisions (1). In addition, it’s true that there are several advantages of sharing private information.
Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
In addition to the advantages mentioned in the article, people notice also the “convenience and time-saving when shopping and doing other transactions, if personal data were already held” (1) like an advantage to the sharing information with companies. Indeed, if they know your preferences, they can easier target the products or services that are susceptible to please you. Thereby, “businesses create personalized services that rely on a regular process of feedback to improve them” (3). Consequently, sharing information eliminates information asymmetries and it participates to improve efficiency of transactions between customers and sellers online. Moreover, in the world where people ask more and more to have personal interactions and attentions, the websites take advantage of the sharing data to correspond as much as possible to the customers in front of them. So, it is not surprising that “online platforms like Google and Facebook use the personal data they acquire to enhance users’ experiences and provide more personally relevant services” (4).
Also, a “study emphasizes the transformational potential of Big Data and underscores how the “volume, variety, and velocity” of information are redefining many aspects of government, commerce, and private life” (2). Indeed, with all the information collected and present on Internet, the companies can adapt and broaden their offers to touch the most of customers’ possible. They can understand their customer easier and faster and adapt their business to future growths (2). The collect of information and market studies take less time than before because most of data are already in databases of companies. Those who go combined strategy for Big Data and privacy of information may become influential in the future industry (2). The Big Data is a huge resource for the economic industry and deal with it is the good way to develop its business. Provide the protection of the data and increase the trust of people are important issues if companies want take advantage of the mass of data in circulation.
And do those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information?
Maybe not. The main negative point about the sharing private information, concerns the lost of control of their personal data. The fraud or identity thefts are real public fears. I think that the problem is not that people don’t want sharing information with companies or other organization. It is more questions of trust and what these organizations make with our information. People are afraid that their personal information fall between bad hands, “be lost, stolen, hacked and leaked” (1). Also, the unsolicited marketing and advertising are also a huge inconvenient for the people. They are always solicited by advertising which they do not need in every website where they go. Many of them tent to block advertising online because of the high number of targeted advertising that they receive.
The increasingly growing digital economy has given the rise to 3 phenomenons among others impacting consumer’s behaviour; price discrimination, targeted advertising and recommendation systems. These phenomenons base their functioning on the ability to collect consumers’ information. Although this Big Data Collection contributes to economic benefits through enabling marketers to tailor better digital services, consumers do not always perceive it positively.… Read more
The increasingly growing digital economy has given the rise to 3 phenomenons among others impacting consumer’s behaviour; price discrimination, targeted advertising and recommendation systems. These phenomenons base their functioning on the ability to collect consumers’ information. Although this Big Data Collection contributes to economic benefits through enabling marketers to tailor better digital services, consumers do not always perceive it positively. On the contrary, they seem to be particularly reluctant. Indeed, digital advertising companies raise the matter of private data collection practices and are nowadays feeling the pressure to reveal what is hidden behind the opaque redistribution of that knowledge. As a result, an information ethics debate has been launched pointing out the privacy issue [1][2].
Due to technological advances, many privacy and data-protection laws have become obsolete leading to gaps in the EU legal framework [3]. The commissions are working on it but have not satisfied consumers so far as regulations always tend to prevail economic aspects over social aspects [2]. Moreover, the commissions face a real challenge in defining what personal data is and its lifecycle.
Still, mutual benefits are to be taken into account.
Let us first consider price discrimination. Firms can nowadays track consumers’ behaviour in order to charge them a different price for the same good [1]. Obviously, when it deals with prices and the way you treat your consumers it is expected to raise controversy. At first glance, consumers would typically refuse being tracked, thinking they are the victim of price discrimination. But do they realize that they also achieve significant benefits through that price discrimination ? Not really. However, it has been observed that in an economy where price discrimination does not exist, consumers end up paying higher prices mainly due to the fact there is no differentiation between high and low valuators [4].
Besides this, big data has changed advertising forever. Indeed, companies rely on consumers’ data to develop promotional activities. Therefore, consumers are arguing that they are constantly being the target of ads. However, those ads are perfectly in line with their latest research and needs and thus, reduce searching costs. In my view, big data is not blame for targeted ads as long as those are not too intrusive.
Big data has brought many discussions forward uring the last year but will remain existent with or without negative aspects on consumers.
Therefore, the questions we should ask ourselves would be whether strong regulations on big data are to be imposed or not in order to protect consumer’s privacy ?
This is a controversial question. However, I believe that strong regulation is not needed.
First and foremost, technologies are going faster than lawmakers which will make it too challenging for them to provide consumers with accurate legislation.
Second, Big Data has strong positive effects on society which can not be denied. For instance, the Big Data collection leads to a significant higher level of innovation such as the creation of language translating tools or mobiles traffic services where the experience of consumers matter to create an accurate and complete service [5]. Besides this, in fields such as healthcare, big data provides doctors with millions of cases analysis enabling them to detect uncommon diseases [3]. As a result, strong regulation on data could prevent those innovations.
Third, I am convinced that consumers will get used to it. Indeed, as for every new invention, consumers find concerns to debate about but will finally accept it.
Moreover, an opportunity for business developers is to be seen. In fact, many consumers considering Big Data as a threat will be looking for tools helping them to protect their privacy. Therefore, companies can seize that opportunity and develop a tool to automate that privacy.
As a result, I think that what governments need to do is not creating strong regulations but educating consumers to develop a critical sense regarding their online interactions leading to a better digital literacy. [5]
There are advantages and disadvantages:
(1) First, there can be a problem of intimacy. We can take a similar example to AT&T such as the postal service. The postal service would make the offer of putting discount shipping if you allow them to read what you sent in your letters. AT&T does the same at the Internet level, which is huge.
Another… Read more
There are advantages and disadvantages:
(1) First, there can be a problem of intimacy. We can take a similar example to AT&T such as the postal service. The postal service would make the offer of putting discount shipping if you allow them to read what you sent in your letters. AT&T does the same at the Internet level, which is huge.
Another point we can think about is the price. We don’t know if in the long term the “poor” could be able to support this extra fee in order to protect their privacy. In other words, the privacy is reserved only for the rich.
And we could say that they force the “poor” to allow them to use our data for advertising purposes. (1)
However, it is interesting to have a lower price to pay and comfortable suited advertisement. (A counter-argument for the suited advertisement is that in general advertising in the Internet are often well targeted and that we don’t need the suited advertisement and the offers that goes with it.)
A solution could be to simply ignore the advertising if we don’t like it, or use applications as Adblock. (which means a decrease in the advertisement revenue). Did you ever take into account the application Adblock in the advertisement Market?
In my opinion, I think I would be better with sharing my personal data with GigaPower and letting companies collect my data and creating my consumer’s profile.
It is at a lower price. I could benefit from the suited and targeted advertising and suited offers for the products I want. More appropriate recommended niche products particular for me. It could reduce my search costs and put downward the prices. However, what are the disadvantages?
As I said in the beginning, from an ethical point of view, the right of privacy is a fundamental right. And nobody wants this right to be removed.
Thus, if we don’t pay the extra fee, the internet provider will know everything about us, where we are, what we are doing in any time, etc.…
Moreover, through the smartphone, there is even more a threat of invading our privacy. In the website (2) is exposed the idea of an application for smartphone that encrypts all the data. So the spying can be avoided.
Hence, a solution can be for the consumer to encrypt its data to a lower price (At the internet level, we can use the VPN at $5-10 per month (3)) than the extra free for data privacy protection. (4)
Eventually, we don’t know exactly who recuperate the data collected. The safety is also an important concern. Indeed, we don’t know who has access to our personal data and we don’t control what is done with those data.
In conclusion, the situation is still unclear. It will depend on the preferences of the consumers. A person that has monetary preferences will not pay the fee for the privacy where the person that has privacy preferences will. There are a lot of advantages but also important concerns. The benefits could certainly outweigh the costs of sharing personal information if we know exactly who has access to the personal data and if we can control them.
As the global digitalization becomes more and more important, digital marketing represents today an mandatory way to reach customers for companies. Thanks to digitalization, companies enjoy from an increasing number of manners to track the customers by being able to gather private information online in order to predict their preferences and behaviors with extreme precision. Because of its outstanding value,… Read more
As the global digitalization becomes more and more important, digital marketing represents today an mandatory way to reach customers for companies. Thanks to digitalization, companies enjoy from an increasing number of manners to track the customers by being able to gather private information online in order to predict their preferences and behaviors with extreme precision. Because of its outstanding value, information data represents a real monetary role, as many transactions between online companies involve information exchange.
Such method enables customers to benefit from offers and advertisement that are tailored to their individual preferences. Further, by receiving multiple similar offers, costumers enjoy from an easy way to compare and look for the best deal on the market.
However, such practices also raise controversy about customer privacy. According to some, because of this privacy violation, many consumer protection laws are not respected anymore. Perceived privacy concern from the customers’ point of view can come from different sources (Ashworth, 2006). Privacy concerns arise when customers feel they lose control over their personal information. Control can be measured by the awareness of the information collection from the customer’s point of view. The user wants to know when his information is collected, and to give prior permission to such practice. Further, the perceived control can be influenced by the way the information collected is used. Users are more reluctant when they know their personal information will be communicated to third parties. Indeed, user tracking can be perceived as very invasive. The privacy concern is often raised and can involve important polemics within huge companies (Ashworth, 2006). According to a survey, out of the 80% of users tracked by a spyware on their computer, 95% have not given their explicit permission to be so. Facebook, for instance, is often under the spotlights because of criticism for gathering and selling user data to third parties (Morran, 2014).
According to a survey, users tend to be even more reluctant depending on the sensibility of the data and the compensation they receive for communicating their private information (Ashworth, 2006).
The question is whether it is the government’s role in this matter. Some believe the government should proactively defend consumers, which would further increase their confidence and thus develop commerce. Others believe consumers should manage their privacy by themselves to not interfere with the market efficiency, which lead to more innovation and more choices for consumers (Ashworth, 2006).
One way to resolve the tension between consumers and online companies could be to collect information in an anonymous way. By doing this, customers have more truth and are more willing to purchase, while companies enjoy of information and increased loyalty (Hoffman, 2014).
Sources:
– Morran, C. (2014). Facebook Is Now Selling Your Web-Browsing Data to Advertisers, Consumerist, https://consumerist.com/2014/06/12/facebook-is-now-selling-your-web-browsing-data-to-advertisers/
– Hoffman, D. et al. (1999). Building Consumer Trust Online. Communications of the ACM, 42(4), p.80-85
– Ashworth, L. et al. (2006). Marketing Dataveillance and Digital Privacy: Using Theories of Justice to Understand Consumers’ Online Privacy Concerns, Journal of Business Ethics, 67, p.107-123
– Solove, D. (2007). The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet, Yale University Press, 18p.
As we all know, benefits of the internet are well established but at a certain cost, which is our privacy as well as our security.
Sharing private information has also a lot of downsides, costs. For instance, when you subscribe to different platforms or company-websites with a Google+ account, you receive an overwhelming number of undesired mails, spams. If you want… Read more
As we all know, benefits of the internet are well established but at a certain cost, which is our privacy as well as our security.
Sharing private information has also a lot of downsides, costs. For instance, when you subscribe to different platforms or company-websites with a Google+ account, you receive an overwhelming number of undesired mails, spams. If you want to unsubscribe all of them, it will take you some precious time. In addition to this, your subscription may also lead to unwanted new contacts. It rapidly overflows your mailbox.
In addition to this, advertising coming from the sites you consulted, can also be overwhelming and take to much space on your web page.
Another thing people worry about is the risk of being hacked. Sharing information can be beneficial by improving internet experience but it might « destroy » your life if some hackers take control over your privacy.
A Pew Research Institute study has shown that 86% of Americans have taken action to maintain anonymity online (deleting cookies, encrypting mails, protecting IP address). Another interesting staitistic is that 50% of internet users are afraid of the information available about them.
People might be afraid of « Big Brother 2.0 ».
But besides this, benefits are manifold. One day, in the near future, with information sharing, you will enter a shop for groceries and you will instantly receive a text with an automatically generated shopping list that includes the location of the aisles where you can find what you need. If information sharing leads to those great benefits, I say yes.
The article talks about the benefits to share your private information online. These benefits could be as well for the consumers, for the companies or for the government. I will try to quote other benefits and to express my opinion. But first, in order to provide some context for this comment, I will give some statistics to express how consumers… Read more
The article talks about the benefits to share your private information online. These benefits could be as well for the consumers, for the companies or for the government. I will try to quote other benefits and to express my opinion. But first, in order to provide some context for this comment, I will give some statistics to express how consumers see the sharing of private information.
In UK survey, more than half (55%) of consumers surveyed say they will share their personal information to get better offers and rewards, but only 8% feel they receiving those benefits. In addition, less than a quarter (23%) of consumers says that the communications they receive from businesses are highly relevant to them. And 80% of survey respondents were willing to share information if the company informs them upfront about how it will be used. Moreover, another study on global consumer attitudes on personal data also concluded that consumers are more inclined to share their data if they saw a direct value to themselves and that consumers were much more likely to share their personal information if it was used by the service provider only.
The first additional benefit that I could profit by letting online service providers accessing my personal data would be the geo-location. Some apps are using this kind of information to provide a useful service such as Google maps, uber and so on. And thus, by letting know where I am, I could for example see which store is close from my position, or which uber car I could take.
The second additional benefit is that this sharing could improve knowledge management. Indeed, partner organizations could develop a better understanding of the work undertaken by each organization. With this amelioration, the companies could be more efficient and thus provide better services and the public organizations with this improvement of the knowledge management could better serve the common good.
The third benefits will also talk about the public services but more in details. The data collected on public services could persuade local partner to invest in Community budgets. In addition, “data sharing between agencies will be essential to enable the creation of whole-family facing services where people who require services from a range of agencies do not have to repeatedly fill in forms provided by different agencies that seem unable to share information securely between themselves”. Moreover, Government could protect us better with our private information, especially in matter of terrorism.
The final benefit is that they may be financial benefits such as the reduction in time an individual spends in hospital, when they can be discharged to an appropriate care setting. Indeed, by letting the different hospitals and doctors have an access to our private medical data, we could spare time because they will not have to phone to each other, to wait to our medical file and so on.
In conclusion, I will express my opinion. What is the price to share my information ? More security, more efficient companies, public sector with more revenues and a better health services. Personally, I think it’s worth the money. It doesn’t bother me very much that big companies have my private information and that they can do survey or advertising campaign with it. But I think everybody should know about it and should know which value they will benefit from it. This must not be done in secret, and it is good enough for the government.
D. Praditya.(2015). Benefits and Challenges in Information Sharing Between the Public and Private Sectors. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Nowadays, consumers are attracted more than ever by companies which are offering personalized services. Most of today’s consumers are ready to share their personal information. Nevertheless, consumers only agree to share more in-depth information’s (access of mobile phone data, geo-tracking, etc…) in exchange of a valuable service. Consumers expects transparency about information’s they give and the way companies used them.… Read more
Nowadays, consumers are attracted more than ever by companies which are offering personalized services. Most of today’s consumers are ready to share their personal information. Nevertheless, consumers only agree to share more in-depth information’s (access of mobile phone data, geo-tracking, etc…) in exchange of a valuable service. Consumers expects transparency about information’s they give and the way companies used them. Ultimately, consumers need insurance that they can stop the flow of information’s whenever they want. In other words, customer is looking for a trust-based relationship. Indeed, as consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy, loss of trust translates into lost opportunities and revenues for companies. Recent high profile data breaches have pushed consumers to escape from service providers that did not protect personal data. For example, in 2014 [1], eBay has been hacked and it had a huge negative impact on its customer trust.
The reality is that companies understood that personal data is one of the most powerful tool ever made by humans. This revolutionary discovery is like always a double-edged sword. On one hand, there is concrete positive externalities regarding the use of big data, such as personalized products/services, faster/better decision making for companies and cost Moreover, “the main advantage of Big Data is that it can reveal patterns between different sources and data sets, enabling useful insights. Let’s think for example of health, food security, intelligent transport systems, energy efficiency and urban planning” [2]. On the other hand, smaller company start to use this tool (to a lesser extent) which is leading to some excess. Indeed, in this article, we have the example of an internet provider which has created a new pricing strategy: they offer a high-speed broadband service for a certain amount (99$ per month) and are allowed to perform deep packet inspection, in order to” monitor all the internet traffic of their subscribers and collect data on the content of those communications.” But this fee drops to 70 $ if their customers share their personal information. By doing this, they are discriminating customers who have a smaller buying power. In simple words, Internet service providers make use of their privileged position in the network to make pressure on consumers. The real point is therefore to determine whether benefits from sharing personal information is really valuable or not. In my case, I managed to find only two positive impacts: the sign-on systems which definitively makes me save time and the fact that I’m not being spammed by all kind of advertising which don’t even concern me. According to me, benefits made from sharing personal information depends on the behaviour of consumers and the balance between the value they give to this benefits compared to earnings made by companies. It has to be balanced otherwise, the only winners are companies. Nevertheless, when examples like AT&T show-up, this is very scary.
Concerning the future development, I think that big data will be crucial and its role in future medicine will lead to a lot’s of revolutionary treatment. On the other hand, only few giants like Facebook and google have the monopole on data. Therefore, these one have a durable competitive advantage compared to the rest of the world.
As a conclusion, I can say that Big Data and issues concerning privacy is becoming a real challenge. Information regarding individual’s health, location, electricity use, online activity and so forth can be publicised, raising concerns about profiling, discrimination, exclusion. We can’t afford a loss of control. Big Data analytics does not always involve personal data, but when it does, it should comply with the rules and principles of data protection.
In order to present what I have learned from my researches, I decided to divide the content of my comment into 4 main parts. Therefore, after having explained what is meant by this “Privacy” concept, I will decline its main risks and negative aspects, mainly from the users point of view. Thereafter, I will raise the opportunities and implied by… Read more
In order to present what I have learned from my researches, I decided to divide the content of my comment into 4 main parts. Therefore, after having explained what is meant by this “Privacy” concept, I will decline its main risks and negative aspects, mainly from the users point of view. Thereafter, I will raise the opportunities and implied by the disruptive “Big Data” for the users as well as for companies and the “economy as a whole” and I will finally conclude with my personal opinion. This way, in my conclusion, I will try to assess the respective weights of the costs and benefits of sharing personal information in order to measure the resulting impact on people.
1. Concept definition
The access, tracking and exploitation of our online browsing history raise concerns about our privacy and pushes users to escape from service providers that do not adequately protect their personal data. Actually the latter concept is part of a much more general one, called “Big Data Collection”. Big Data refers to large amounts of different types of data produced from various types of sources such as people, machines or sensors. In the analyzed situation, Big Data involves personal information collected by online service providers from their networking activity, online browsing, computer IP address, …
Then, online companies use the gathered information to implement behaviour-based price discrimination, using detailed consumption profiles previously developed and their expected valuation of the product (willingness to pay).
2. Risks and negative externalities
First of all, it is obvious that Internet users do not like their privacy to be violated. Data collection may seem them too intrusive and invasive what can make feel them like if they didn’t control anything anymore. Unfortunately, ensuring personal data protection becomes more challenging as information is multiplied and shared ever more widely around the world. Information regarding individual’s health, location, electricity use, online activity and so forth can be publicized, raising concerns about profiling, discrimination, exclusion and loss of control. Moreover, we never know who uses our private information and to what extend, and this may lead to ethical drifts such as the one concerning Google and Facebook selling their consumers information to the NSA.
3. Benefits and positive externalities
Despite all the negative points listed above, the number of positive externalities remains significant. In fact, it appears that data collection can be used to tailor pricing and product offerings, which enhance consumer welfare and increase firms׳ profits.
Even if the text already points out lots of benefits with respect to different aspects such as targeted advertising and recommendations systems, my researches allowed me to raise other interesting and sometimes unexpected ones.
a. From the user point of view:
The benefits of private data analysis are varied and extends to lots of areas such as health, food, security, intelligent transport system, energy efficiency, urban planning. This way, such an access to our personal information can improve social services quality and suitability, strengthen security, personalize services and make increased availability of relevant information. For instance, Scientists can use big data in research that can improve human well-being. As a matter of fact, huge volumes of information and patient data have helped detect drug interactions, allowing them to design and implement optimal drug therapies while inducing reduction medical expenditures and indirect costs associated with lower productivity.
Morevoer, as mentioned above, big data can also improve the performance of services provided by government agencies. For example, big data helps law enforcement agencies to deploy resources more efficiently, respond quickly and increase presence in crime prone areas. Big data can also help fight the spread of communicable diseases. This way, a retrospective analysis of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti showed that mining data from Twitter and online news reports could have given the country׳s health officials an accurate indication of the disease׳s spread with a lead time of two weeks.
b. From companies and the economy as a whole point of view
In this case, the balance between benefits and costs is clearly less nuanced. Effectively, through ensuring higher productivity, the concept of big data clearly offers lots of opportunities and growth perspectives. As a matter of fact, The use of Big Data by the top 100 EU manufacturers could lead to savings worth € 425 billion, and by 2020, Big Data analytics could boost EU economic growth by an additional 1.9%, which means a GDP increase of € 206 billion. In European countries such as Germany, Great-Britain, Luxembourg, the “big data” constitutes a booming and disruptive market, what drive innovative technology companies to make significant investments. In this regard, Apple is, for instance, investing €1.7 Billion in new European Data Centres.
4. My personal opinion
First of all, as Internet users we have to be conscious that if companies exploit our personal digital information, their first goal is not to increase consumers welfare but to maximize their own profits. Nevertheless, data collection can induce a lot of positive externalities in terms of economical aspects as well as in other terms such as health, energy, public services and so on.
In my opinion, it would be a mistake not to exploit this great opportunity to renew a little bit the economy of some European countries, which are sometimes at the end of their rope. However, this would request a lot of regulations in order to prevent damaging drifts and total losses of control.
This article presents some advantages that people can have by sharing private information on Internet. I believe that sharing our information can be something positive if it is done in a correct way.
As explained in the article, big data’s and information delivered by consumers are helpful for targeted advertising, recommendation systems or sign-on systems. It helps the consumer to… Read more
This article presents some advantages that people can have by sharing private information on Internet. I believe that sharing our information can be something positive if it is done in a correct way.
As explained in the article, big data’s and information delivered by consumers are helpful for targeted advertising, recommendation systems or sign-on systems. It helps the consumer to improve its virtual experience.
I believe that the sharing of information and big data’s are going to improve our “real life experience” as well. In 2013, Apple made a nearly invisible launch for the public during its annual conference (WWDC): The iBeacon. The iBeacon is a protocol that is able to detect smartphones and tablet in a limited range and then to send a message to the device through Bluetooth. As it is installed at the entrance of some stores, the iBeacon can detect people when they enter the store (or even when they just walk past the store) and send a promotion message to the client’s device. It gives an incentive for people to visit the store and to buy something. That is where the technology currently stands.
But let us imagine that the little device is also connected to database and can recognize who is the owner of the phone. We can easily conceive that, when we will walk in front of the store, the iBeacon will be able to recognize us, to analyse our points of interest of the moment and to send us a personalized promotion for something we are looking for.
And it is not the only possible kind of application for such a device. For example, an iBeacon at the entrance of an emergency department will directly send all your personal information to the doctors. It will allow a faster and more efficient patient care from the doctors.
Of course, to be really efficient, those beacons need to have access to a lot of information and people have to give those. Nevertheless, according to the success of the pricing strategy of AT&T, people are ready to pay to avoid the giveaway of information. This situation is due to the fact that people are not aware that they can gain from the sharing of privacy and most of them think it is just an intrusion into their private life. The technology is there, but people are maybe not ready to accept it yet.
To conclude this comment, I would like to give my thoughts about the sharing of private information. My opinion is that, as Internet users, we cannot avoid the sharing of our information and, to be honest, it does not really bother me that much. I can understand that the fact that, for example, Google is making money from my last visit on one of their platform may seem a bit “borderline” for some people. But if it allows to improve my user experience and to keep the service free then I can accept it. Indeed, in my opinion, the cost of giving information is smaller than the benefit I can gain with a better virtual experience.
It is true that sharing personal data can bring benefits to the consumer. As explained in the article, it is a good way for companies to have a nearly perfect segmentation of the market. As companies know what each customer needs by analyzing personal/browsing data, consumers have now access to personalized offers and advertising. Besides, the fact that websites can… Read more
It is true that sharing personal data can bring benefits to the consumer. As explained in the article, it is a good way for companies to have a nearly perfect segmentation of the market. As companies know what each customer needs by analyzing personal/browsing data, consumers have now access to personalized offers and advertising. Besides, the fact that websites can sell our data to other companies can also lead to cheaper products for the final consumer because data selling is an additional source of revenues for them.
Another benefit for consumers is that data collection can lead to more innovation. If companies have access to information about consumers’ tastes and expectations, they can elaborate new products, answering better to customers’ needs. These new products will also probably be cheaper because the big data is an inexpensive (and sometimes even free) way for companies to collect information. Consumers have therefore potentially access to new, better and cheaper products.
However, I personally do not think that these benefits outweigh the risks of sharing data. Letting companies have access to your data can indeed lead to a lot of (direct or indirect) disadvantages.
First, consumers do not like to be observed but they are conscious that companies collect their data. This situation can lead to a distrust-based relationship between customers and companies. If the customers do not trust the ads they receive, they will lose time on comparison, which will lead to increased search costs for them. Besides, it is never a good thing to have trust issues in a transaction. This problem is emphasized when companies sell data to others because consumers do not know where their data will eventually arrive. Anyway, for me, this risk could nonetheless be outweighed by the advantages of Big Data for the customers as the price is finally one of the most important criteria for consumers.
However, the fact that these data could be stolen or published is another problem for them. They probably do not feel concerned about this issue when browsing the internet but it could result to a huge cost for them if their personal information are not only known by a company but by everyone, because their data could be used by groups for malicious purposes (the government, for example).
The system of personalized advertising may also present risks:
Without falling in conspiracy theory, this system could be used to manipulate and, for instance, to have an influence on your vote. As an example, Facebook could easily know what we are sensitive and concerned about. People having access to these data and to personalized advertising systems could play on that, which will lead to a loss of “free will” for the consumer.
Finally, the most important problem for me as a consumer is the “algorithmic cage”. Algorithms used by companies for personalized advertising is a huge brake to products/sells diversity as they will only show me products perfectly corresponding to my past research. We are therefore forced to consume always more of the same. For example, if I am looking for a BMW 3 series on Autoscout24, advertising will only show me BMW’s and its size/price competitors in the following days but I would perhaps be happy to find a little surprising Mazda or Toyota, even if it does not correspond to my first will (I personally experienced this situation 🙂 ).
To conclude, this sentence [1] is, for me, a perfect summary of the situation: “Finally, the problem is not stalking or the plethora of advertising […] but more the lack of value creation for the customer. If companies used data to create value for each customer, data collecting would, today, not be such a big deal.”
The real problem is that your personal information can be diffused and used by people you never agreed. So for me, the advantages of data collection for the customers could outweigh all these problems if and only if :
-they can control the situation and have the right to be totally forgotten
-if they know who really has access to this information
-if they have control on how deep algorithms interfere in their private life
The AT&T U-verse offer is a first answer to this last problem as they ask a different price to have access to browsing data or browsing AND video data.
In my opinion, sharing personal data about consumers’ behavior can be very interesting for the internet users. At the first sight, I think that it’s normal to apprehend this but I believe that once you experienced the benefits of it, you can see that it’s not something bad.
I personally believe that my personal data of web surfing doesn’t need a… Read more
In my opinion, sharing personal data about consumers’ behavior can be very interesting for the internet users. At the first sight, I think that it’s normal to apprehend this but I believe that once you experienced the benefits of it, you can see that it’s not something bad.
I personally believe that my personal data of web surfing doesn’t need a high level of privacy. Since this data is mainly used to personalize the internet experience, I find it good that companies can use it to actually target me with personalized content and suggestion that are aligned with my preferences.
Of course, we can’t really control what we give away and what we can keep “secret” and therefore, we can find it disturbing that companies make business by trading a lot of different information about us, without even knowing what they have collected and what they are trading. We can also doubt on the ethics of this and how the companies will be using all these data.
But I can get over this, as the big data is subject to regulations and that therefore, it can’t really hurt the consumer. The benefits of data sharing profiting to me, like better targeting or having access to less popular products (long tail) but also like the other benefits explained in the article, outweigh the cost of that sharing.
Regarding the price discrimination, I also believe that it’s not such a bad thing. Of course, you can think that you may pay a higher price than someone else, but like explained in the article, the product can be declined in various version which can suit the different types of potential user, which is something good for the global welfare.
However I still believe that there’s a lot to improve on this domain, like for example the form of the advertising which is, according to me, too intrusive. Therefore, I cannot conceive to surf on the web without an ad blocker today, even the substance of the advertising could be interesting to me. But that’s another problem which also deserve some attention.
My personal opinion is that as much as I do not like the idea of willingly giving multiple large companies more data about myself and my behaviors, so far I believe the benefits to do so greatly outweigh my apprehension. I have found tremendous benefits in using many ad supported services that I do not believe would be possible in… Read more
My personal opinion is that as much as I do not like the idea of willingly giving multiple large companies more data about myself and my behaviors, so far I believe the benefits to do so greatly outweigh my apprehension. I have found tremendous benefits in using many ad supported services that I do not believe would be possible in their current forms without the increased monetization effects from personally targeted ad revenue (Much greater CPMs). In this way I believe it is important to realize that many of the great tools we use on the internet need to be ad supported, it might as well be through relevant ads to the individual which can only occur through behaviour tracking (browsing history, geolocation etc)
I can say personally that relevant data concerning my online shopping habbits has been useful for me as a consumer. The data that Amazon collects to both target ads “Other customers bought…” as well as placing retargetting ads has added positively to my E-commerce experiences.
With all that being said, it is important that consumers adapt to the new model and understand the trade offs they are implicitly making by signing up for a social networking site or utilzing a service offered by Google – as Scott Goodson at Forbes says “If you’re not paying for it, you become the product” [1], and I truly believe for a lot of people (myself included) this trade off of receiving all these incredible free services in exchange for more of my anonymous data being tracked by a number of very large (for profit) corporations is certainly increasing their overall well-being.
Firstly, I think it’s important to note the framing of the cost structure of privacy that AT&T offers. Instead of paying more to ensure privacy, the consumer actually has the higher privacy price as the default option and then must choose to forgo the privacy function in order to make a saving. The framing of this pricing is paramount and… Read more
Firstly, I think it’s important to note the framing of the cost structure of privacy that AT&T offers. Instead of paying more to ensure privacy, the consumer actually has the higher privacy price as the default option and then must choose to forgo the privacy function in order to make a saving. The framing of this pricing is paramount and plays on the human beings innate biases. Daniel Kahneman, the nobel prize winning economist talked about these biases and how framing effects impact mans decision making processes. The default option is important as one would have to elect to forgo it, meaning the decision is his/her own. (Kahneman, 2011) This greatly impacts how one would feel if their privacy was indeed invaded and they knew that it was their own fault for not sticking with the default option, rather than paying a premium for the service.
There is an obvious benefit to companies in having access to your private information such as searching habits, duration of stay on sights etc. This “big data” can be used by firms to tailor their advertisements to your own preferences resulting in greater accuracy and increased effectiveness. There is a clear value to this, as companies like AT&T, see having access to your private habits as being worth enough to merit a decrease in monthly subscription of 30%. Whilst some of this mark up is comprised of the monetized value of consumers annoyance of being tracked and wanting to hide their information, it is also certainly made up of the benefit firms, like AT&T derive from having access to your private information.
It could be argued that consumers themselves benefit from having their personal information shared with these companies. The companies can then produce personalized, tailored, targeted advertisements and recommendations for each individual consumer based on their own browsing habits. The benefit of this however, is vastly weighted towards the advertisers and the firms targeting the consumer. These firms are not advertising or recommending to benefit the consumer, they are doing so to exploit the consumer and increase their own profit. Whilst savvy consumers may be able to forgo paying a premium to hide their privacy as they are aware of the advertisements that can be generated as a result of that decision, it is not, I believe in the best interest of all consumers.
Sources:
Daniel Kahneman , “Thinking Fast and Slow”, October 25, 2011
Mark Zuckerberg once said « People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people ». This sentence seems increasingly true even if we often try to deny it.
If it is allowed today to provide such a service, it is because of the evolution of peole's privacy standards and… Read more
Mark Zuckerberg once said « People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people ». This sentence seems increasingly true even if we often try to deny it.
If it is allowed today to provide such a service, it is because of the evolution of peole’s privacy standards and the way they are using internet. Indeed, everyone reveals his private life without restraint regardless of the, yet well-known, risk. There is a contradiction between the need of confidentiality and the desire to share with others.
Everyone is aware of the benefits of sharing private information with providers. The problem lies in the different ways this information may be used. There is no proper control of who and how our personal data is used.
According to me, it would be very interesting to have a feedback on where our information goes, as well as leaving us the choice of to whom we give our information.
Nowadays, we know that the web is a virtual market that is very difficulet to control, and the rules of this market are evolving very slowly. We should take this into account and act knowingly. It’s one thing to enjoy those attractive services full of perks, but in that case, we also have to accept that the providers take some advantages. One solution to avoid an envading use of our private data is to pay attention to what information we place on the internet. Moreover, we can also use services that guarantee our privacy.
To conclude, one must be aware that this business is fruitful because it is full of opportunities for the providers to use our information, sometimes at our disadvantage. For my part, the dangers of personal data being used against my will outweigh the benefits those sites provide us, and therefore i am very careful in the way i share my information on the internet.
Since this year I’ve begun to earn more and more about Economics of Privacy, SEO, SEA, and all these stuffs you do with your computer without even realising it.
When I think about the number of accounts I used to have on many websites (I can’t remember the number of virtual cats, rabbits, sharks of even humans I had for a… Read more
Since this year I’ve begun to earn more and more about Economics of Privacy, SEO, SEA, and all these stuffs you do with your computer without even realising it.
When I think about the number of accounts I used to have on many websites (I can’t remember the number of virtual cats, rabbits, sharks of even humans I had for a while), I just think that at that point, I had no idea where my information were going to. But I remember that I was already annoyed with all the e-mails these sites’ partners send to me as I created an e-mail account especially for these.
When I first started to realise that the advertising that were offered to me had a link with the sites I went to, I first felt a little bit offended, as if I were spied on.
But then I realised that as long as I had to see these ads all around, I’d rather look at the ones that seemed interesting for me.
This still causes me two problems:
– First, when I look for information about something, I tend to open many new pages and tabs and do my research on several days in a row. When I’m almost finished or I just can’t bear with the subject anymore, I just save it all and then close it. When I’m at this point, I’m usually so fed up that I don’t want to see anything about my research, so these ads don’t really come handy.
– Second, these ads show information about the products I bought, not the products I liked. Seeing other products from a brand that I didn’t like sure won’t help.
About the benefits of sharing private information, I think you’re right to specify that if someone had to pay a higher price, then somewhere, someone benefitted from a lower price. But many customers will see the fact of paying a lower price as “good luck” and a higher one, “bad luck”. And as we are human beings, we tend to feel more “horrified” with the injustice of the bad luck of paying something more expensive (that is if you realize it, though) than feeling lucky because we had a deal.
But companies also have to face the fact that more and more customers value their personal information. People don’t want to be fooled anymore, and tend to hide as much as their private life as possible.
One of the event that made people worry about their personal life was the big bug on Facebook on September, 24th 2012 where people were able to see personal messages on their timeline.
In conclusion, I don’t think that the benefits really outweigh the costs of sharing personal information. When you refuse to share it, it’s can be a temporary situation as you still can upload them anytime, but the other way around is not so easy. People are more and more aware that anything that you put on the Internet will be there almost forever.
Despite all the benefits developed above, it is clear that a great proportion of people are still suspicious about that fact of sharing personal information on the web. Indeed, in North America for example, “91% of adults in a survey “agree” or “strongly agree” that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies” or… Read more
Despite all the benefits developed above, it is clear that a great proportion of people are still suspicious about that fact of sharing personal information on the web. Indeed, in North America for example, “91% of adults in a survey “agree” or “strongly agree” that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies” or “80% of those who use social networking sites say they are concerned about third parties like advertisers or businesses accessing the data they share on these sites”. However, there are of course people who admit sharing persona data in a commercial way in order to take advantage of best deals that advertisers could propose: “55% of adults “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement: “I am willing to share some information about myself with companies in order to use online services for free””.
Another benefits that consumers may enjoy is the intervention of the state. Obviously, it could also lead to concerns and fears when government can access consumer‘s personal habits and behaviors on the internet. Nevertheless, collecting the same information about consumers just as advertisers or firms do, may allow government to be more efficient in regulating what they are doing with our personal information. Again in the USA, “64% of adults believe the government should do more to regulate advertisers, compared with 34% who think the government should not get more involved”. Indeed, the state could play the role of a watchful regulator who could take care of the global welfare and protect the consumer surplus when needed. This could also lead to price reduction.
As far as I am concerned, I usually pay attention not to give too much information about me or not to register in a lot of shopping websites. This is because one of the only experience that I have had being tracked by advertisers, was a disadvantageous experience. Typically, when I looked for a plane ticket online one day and I compared prices of the same travel ticket the day after it increased the price proposed by the website of the flight company as it knew at that moment that I was interested.
These three articles highlight several relevant aspects of the growing issues around privacy. The first article analysed the potentials benefits for consumers from sharing information with online service providers. The second one pointed out some basic notions of the Economics of Privacy and individuals’ attitudes toward privacy. Finally, the third text tackles the theoretical and empirical approaches on how to… Read more
These three articles highlight several relevant aspects of the growing issues around privacy. The first article analysed the potentials benefits for consumers from sharing information with online service providers. The second one pointed out some basic notions of the Economics of Privacy and individuals’ attitudes toward privacy. Finally, the third text tackles the theoretical and empirical approaches on how to value private information. In this comment, I will try to discuss these different notions relating to privacy.
1. Benefits from letting online service providers access personal data
Eva-Maria Scholz asked us to think about the benefits we identify from sharing private information with online providers. As a matter of fact, I never thought about the potential benefits maybe because my generation was always mainly warned about the dangers of Internet. However, the article highlighted some benefits individuals enjoy by sharing their personal data. About the behaviour-based price discrimination, I recently was looking for plane tickets through search engines comparing the proposed prices by the different airlines. Later that day, I went back to the same page to see if there were better opportunities than earlier. Surprisingly, all prices had risen even the flight I was interested in (which was in 6 months). Later, someone told me that I should change computer when I want to use this website because they track IP addresses and increase prices when they see that an individual is looking for a particular flight.
I am not sure this theory it is totally genuine but nevertheless, one week later prices decreased again. Therefore, I am not convinced this kind of discrimination might always work if people just need to change computer to remain unspotted. However, this might also be related to the increasing number of requests for this specific flight.
2. Other Benefits
The sign-on systems enable people to use the same account for different websites. In my opinion, such systems are relevant in the case where recommendations systems are taken into account. For instance, on Airbnb most individuals register thanks to their Facebook account, which allows customers to quickly visit the person’s profile (that might be the owner of the apartment you are interested in or one of the last person renting the apartment). Other systems like Doodle also use this kind of device permitting people to answer to polls without logging in.
3. Benefits vs. personal costs
Finally, even after the latest scandals about Facebook and Google selling private information concerning their consumers to the NSA, people continue to use their services. I wonder in fact about why privacy is that much of a hot topic. I understand that we do not want all our pictures and bank accounts to go viral but after Charlie Hebdo’s attack, individuals might also wonder why potential terrorists are not closely watched. It is difficult to find the right balance between surveillance and the right to privacy when it is concerned. Other proponents raised that a third party might be relevant to arbitrate on this issue.
Moreover, I would like to point out that when natural catastrophes like the seism that occurred last Saturday in Nepal, Facebook and Google might be very useful tools to find missing people. Google reactivated the “Person Finder” already implemented during disasters such as Fukushima and Haiti’s earthquake. The company enables to report a missing person and also information related to the individual. Moreover, the service also allows the loved ones to send a text message. Facebook’s “Safety Check” suggests to members logging in in zones where a disaster happened to let people know they are all right. As a result, this businesses benefiting from the sharing of personal information might also serve common good.
I am not a big online buyer and I often mistrust sites that ask for personnel data. In most of the cases, I stop the transaction because I have it in horror to be spied by the marketing department of a company. This is because I have in mind the 50 mails I receive per week with advertisement and other… Read more
I am not a big online buyer and I often mistrust sites that ask for personnel data. In most of the cases, I stop the transaction because I have it in horror to be spied by the marketing department of a company. This is because I have in mind the 50 mails I receive per week with advertisement and other offers that don’t interest me at all.
I would like to get mails with offers that are tailored to my preferences. But the fact is that when I receive such mails, it is often junk mail and it is irritating me: the content is not at all relevant to what I am searching for. What happened? Do the company not remembered my preferences or did I just not decided to share the company my opinion about his products because I mistrusted the site? In fact, I am puzzled by the effectiveness of the use of personal data.
In a document written by Alessandro Acquisti, the author exposes a wide range of benefits for “data subjects” to share their personal information. It can result in immediate benefits and intangible result. We talk about discounts and others personalised and customised information. But I think that in most of the cases, data is often not well used. In my opinion there is a real benefit when the discrimination is optimal and efficient. When people are contacted by companies that are able to offer exactly what people are looking for, the user’s utility is supposed to increase. But in most of the cases the data of the consumers is not well analysed and many consumers are put into the same bag, while they don’t have the same preferences: they aggregate data. And it should be even more difficult for the companies to analyse well the preferences of customers when they don’t share complete data or when the data is not valid. When Acquisti enumerates the costs of not sharing data, he mentions the opportunity lost when a user make the choice of not sharing his data.
In my opinion, the customer’s data has to be really well analysed in order to take marketing actions that can be beneficial for the customers. The fact is that in most of the cases, companies don’t have the financial and time resources in order to use this data efficiently, which can be understandable. I think that if consumers were optimally targeted by the companies and if they had the true feeling that sharing their personal data, they certainly will be less reluctant to share their personal data. By this, I mean that customer’s satisfaction would increase if their personal data was well used by companies in order to target them better.
Could we assume that if the satisfaction of customers increases by the sharing of their personal information, they would be more likely to share this information? Could it be possible to have a virtuous circle: when customers share more information, companies are able to target better those customers and the satisfactions of those customers increase and the benefit of companies rises too because they are able to target better their customers.
In my opinion, when customers are well discriminated, the benefits overweight the costs.
Sources:
– Acquisti, A., The Economics of Personal Data and the Economics of Privacy, 30 Years after the OECD Privacy Guidelines
– From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases, A Winterberry Group White Paper January 2012
First of all, I agree that firms make behaviour-based price discrimination. Some people claim that it is not fair, that it is not equal. But there are lot of examples which make some price discrimination.
Moreover, concerning more precisely the tracking of the so-called private information, I also agree with enterprises doing this. For example, there exist some sites which… Read more
First of all, I agree that firms make behaviour-based price discrimination. Some people claim that it is not fair, that it is not equal. But there are lot of examples which make some price discrimination.
Moreover, concerning more precisely the tracking of the so-called private information, I also agree with enterprises doing this. For example, there exist some sites which would be costly if they didn’t earn money with brokering of information. Not only we have all advantages quoted above in the text, but we also have free access very useful to sites which could be costly without this information tracking. All those benefits obviously outweigh the costs of sharing personnal data. Anybody does really inspect you. Indeed, your data are just calculated by a program where your name is anonymous.
According to my opinion, you authorize firms to track your browse history since you decided going on internet. Even if it was forbidden, they would do it without you even knowing about it.
Concerning the topic on data sharing, we can say that it is one of the major issue today on online privacy. Indeed, studies has shown that “more data cross the internet every second than were stored in the entire internet just 20 years ago” (1). The “big data”, as they called it, permits to treat these information and has revolutionized… Read more
Concerning the topic on data sharing, we can say that it is one of the major issue today on online privacy. Indeed, studies has shown that “more data cross the internet every second than were stored in the entire internet just 20 years ago” (1). The “big data”, as they called it, permits to treat these information and has revolutionized the business models of companies operating in the 21st Century. They can now accomplish a feat which was impossible 30 years ago: they know who we are, what we like, what we don’t like, what we may like etc.
Take Facebook as an example which is “the Eldorado” for data gathering-firms. We share our personal information (such as age, occupation, films, books, music etc.) there under the false assumptions that the privacy is relatively effective, that only our friends will be able to see them. But evidences have been found that many applications on Facebook have been transmitting information to dozen of advertising and data-analyzing companies (2).
Even when we download applications (such as angry bird an innocent game in appearance) on our smartphones of tablets, other companies can collect our data in one way or other without our knowledge (3).
Today, we share our personnel information more readily than ever online. Just a quick example: I am looking for a student job during the summer and in order to do that, I had to subscribe online to employment agency such as monster, stepstone, Randstad, tempo-team etc. In total, I just shared my personal information (mail, phone number, address, birthdate etc.) to ten different websites without batting an eyelash. Of course, they all had a privacy clause but we are never immune to a hacking such as SNCB which, just three years ago, revealed personal data of more than one millions of their users on their website. (4)
Despite all these facts, I personally think that I benefit from it. Indeed, the advertisements displayed on Facebook are those who interests me and I receive mail about concerts of bands which I am a big fan of. Some were even more appealing because they offered a discount to a product which I already had the intention to buy so I consider this as a win-win situation. I even discovered new books via Goodreads and new clothes brands (Brandy Melville, urban outfitters) thanks to that. Though, I admit that it may benefits more large-scale consumers easily suggestible such as me. In my opinion, even without data sharing, we would be spammed by advertisements. Better be the one who may hold our attention. Also, for those who are outraged to have personal information divulged by social media or the applications which they downloaded, these are part of their revenue stream, thus part of the reasons why they are for free. I prefer this case than to pay a fee for Facebook, Spotify or YouTube.
To conclude, although the benefits vs costs of sharing personal information depends from one to another, in my point of view, the benefits clearly outweighs the costs.
I think that the usage of personal information by companies is still in its infancy for many reasons. If we look back in history, we could take the example of the postcard who was rejected by the Kaiser in Germany because of privacy concerns. The use of postcards is now really spread and implemented in the everyday life, but why… Read more
I think that the usage of personal information by companies is still in its infancy for many reasons. If we look back in history, we could take the example of the postcard who was rejected by the Kaiser in Germany because of privacy concerns. The use of postcards is now really spread and implemented in the everyday life, but why ? Because people have understood that the benefits are outweighing the disadvantages. Moreover, people understood that they have a perfect control of the information they expose publicly. Indeed, people choose what they are writing on their postcards.
The same principle can be applied in the use of online data by companies. I think that the problem is that people do not understand which information is using and the way it is used. Indeed, if people does not know the danger of the system, they cannot be comfortable with it. That is precisely what it is happening nowadays.
Researches have shown that the awareness of use of online data by companies or even by government is high but, as I’ve mentioned before, the level of understanding of what it practically means is quite lower. It also highlights that people think that there is no alternative to sharing information that this trend will be even higher in the following years. What is encouraging for managers is that young people have nowadays a different vision of privacy and are not afraid to share information online.
Solutions are possible to counterfeit the fact that people do not understand the system. The best solution for managers would be the proactivity of the consumers in researching information on the issue, but that solution has only limited potential. Managers have to communicate on the issue in order to obtain a win-win solution. Companies will have more information and people will understand that sharing information can be translated into benefits.
As far as I’m concerned, I think that many companies are using my online information. The cause is really simple: Except food, I buy almost everything on Internet. Every social network is using our information in order to make advertising relevant in our point of view. It can be really simple like YouTube offering videos similar to what we have already watched previously. But it can lead to more complex process like target advertising. Earlier this week, I was searching a specific product on the Amazon website and I see now related advertising everyday on Facebook.
At first, let me say that this article has been really interesting as it has made several links with topics addressed earlier in the semester. My personal situation makes me unwilling to provide online any personal information. As my father works for the Anti-Fraud European Office, he always told me that sharing personal information and letting anyone to have… Read more
At first, let me say that this article has been really interesting as it has made several links with topics addressed earlier in the semester. My personal situation makes me unwilling to provide online any personal information. As my father works for the Anti-Fraud European Office, he always told me that sharing personal information and letting anyone to have access to it can cause unpleasant situations. I will not develop this point too much as I only want to underline my non-objective situation.
Commonly, studies showed that customers in countries such as Germany are less willing to share their personal data than customers in USA for example (Infosys). In Europe, customers don’t feel the real necessity and positive effect of sharing personal data. People are often scared that it won’t be used only for commercial purposes but also for steeling identities for example. Of course, this is an extreme situation but it may happen to everybody.
Concerning the balance between the benefits and the costs of sharing personal information, I think it is a difficult exercise to concretely estimate the weight of each side of the balance. Each person will give a higher weight to either the benefits or the costs. The costs will get a higher weight if the person has a bad experience. For example, as we’ve seen with the concept of remarketing, companies usually analyse customer’s behaviour each time they visit a website. As a consequence, if I often visit a website which allows me to buy online, I will see, in other websites, many ads concerning the first one. This will usually bring me to visit again this website and buy more stuff. If the person tends to buy a lot online, it can create certain dependence, like drugs’ effects. Dependence leads many times to depression or, in our case, money problems. In our example, a customer who has experienced a similar situation gives a higher weight to the costs of sharing personal information.
What do you think?
I consider that data sharing nowadays has become inevitable. Alongside the evolution of the internet presence in our day-to-day life, our modern society has evolved. Our society shifted from a business model where products and services are sold throughout the consumers without any discrimination into a business model where one of the most important part of the… Read more
What do you think?
I consider that data sharing nowadays has become inevitable. Alongside the evolution of the internet presence in our day-to-day life, our modern society has evolved. Our society shifted from a business model where products and services are sold throughout the consumers without any discrimination into a business model where one of the most important part of the firm’s decisions is to be able to target the right consumers at the right time at the right place.
With this being said, it does not mean that I totally agree with the data sharing in its current state. It is still strange when you realize that they are some firms that manage to make some quite important profits thanks to your personal information. Can we really say that those profits are deserved? Coming from a household where ‘manual’ work has always been put forward as the best way to succeed in life, I find it difficult to agree with the fact I just mentioned above.
However, I have to admit that I do agree with the benefits of data sharing that have been presented in this article. And with over-connected society, data sharing has become necessary in order for our society to function correctly.
Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
Initially, I did not have the impression that I hugely benefited from data sharing. I was aware that there must be a lot of underlining impacts of data sharing which influence positively our day-to-day life. Unfortunately I did not see those positive effects and so I was not aware of them. Indeed I did not experience a real reduction of price and since I greatly dislike advertising in general, having targeted advertising did not please me more than other advertising. Yet I still managed to understand that targeted advertising allowed me to get some useful information about products or services which I really appreciated sometimes.
But after reading this article and some other sources, I managed to understand some advantages I did not linked with data sharing before. For example, one advantage of data sharing I did not noticed until this article is the ‘Single sign-on systems’. I frequently use this system and it is a real time saving system. Also the recommendation systems are a real benefit in a day-to-day life.
Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
Another benefit I experienced is that my search costs are being reduced thanks to data sharing. Indeed due to the targeted advertising and the recommendation systems, as a customer you are presented with supplementary products that really suit you. And this is done without any extra search costs since it is the firm that presents you those products on a silver plate. Moreover, like I said above, I consider that data sharing allows the firm to propose the right product to the right customer at the right time without any extra costs towards the customers.
Data sharing is also important in other domains than the one mentioned here. One of those domains is the scientific one. In this domain, data sharing allow a rapid and better progress. Indeed data sharing reinforce an open scientific inquiry; promote new research through existing data, etc. The scientific domain is not the only domain that gains from this sharing.
And do those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information?
This question depends on each person I suppose. Some persons put a lot of value on the secrecy of their personal information and then others do not really care about who knows what about them. When the privacy of your information is very important for you, you will probably weight the inconvenience higher than the benefits of data sharing.
However for the future, it is important that data sharing systems are regulated. There should be a limit to who can obtain which information and especially how they obtain it. Otherwise there is the risk to evolve into a ‘big brother’ society where everyone is spied on all the time. It is by regulation that we will be able to decrease this risk. One solution is to increase the transparency in those data sharing systems. As a customer, you only see the tip of the iceberg. More transparency about the costs and the advantages of data sharing would allow the customers to take the right decisions about their personal information and where they want to share those information.
As conclusion, I personally think that it is only when a balance is found between having certain data protected and other data getting shared, analysed and used that we will be in a win-win situation for both data holders and data subjects. I do realize that this is a complex trade-off and there is properly no ‘optimum’ number of data sharing. Yet it is still important to reflect on the matter. It is only by this means that the costs of data sharing can be compensated by the benefits. Otherwise, we will never been in a society where the maximum utility can be reached.
In my personal day-to-day life I benefit form most of the advantages mentioned in the article: I save time with single sign-on systems, most of the time I do not disagree with the ads I receive on youtube or similar and one single good recommendation can make up for the three or four that I didn’t care about. Although I… Read more
In my personal day-to-day life I benefit form most of the advantages mentioned in the article: I save time with single sign-on systems, most of the time I do not disagree with the ads I receive on youtube or similar and one single good recommendation can make up for the three or four that I didn’t care about. Although I don’t find a big difference in terms of benefits between giving access or not to my personal data, I have to mention that in some occasions I have found great advantages from data sharing; maybe the best example is when I am on vacation and thanks to your geographical location, preferences and budget you receive information about products/services you would be interested into acquire in the short term. What is important to notice is that this happens (mostly) when there is a greater disclose of more specific information. This works for me only until some basic point; I don’t like companies and advertisers knowing every single detail about me and my preferences even if it means more accurate recommendations. I don’t like neither the future vision of having everywhere super accurate and personalized ads or recommendations much like in the Minority Report style, so I like webpages to inform me about advertisers’ attempts to profile me and to have the choice of opting out.
For the time being I find the benefits of sharing my info greater than the costs (positive payoff between the sacrifice of some personal space for the convenience or connection). I think we are still in times where information collected by advertising networks is so fragmented and so laden with errors that sometimes it is useless or even self-defeating (as found in some of the examples of other comments); proof of it is how no one has been able to make a big business out of personal information (even assuming you master the art of what to do with the right information) it is still quite difficult and expensive to link online and offline information. As already commented, one extra benefit of sharing information is the positive use that Governments and intelligence or security agencies can give to it. As a final line, I want to say that I am pretty aware of the facility with which you can change the value you give to personal information especially when considering than text messages, online chats, emails and other supposedly private information can be retrievable by lawyers, employers and others.
About behaviour-based price discrimination, I think that it is normal that the firms profit of the situation, who would not do it? It is now the role of consumers to pay more attention to the price of goods. There exists search engine, comparison-shopping sites: a lot of means to find the best price of the product that we want to… Read more
About behaviour-based price discrimination, I think that it is normal that the firms profit of the situation, who would not do it? It is now the role of consumers to pay more attention to the price of goods. There exists search engine, comparison-shopping sites: a lot of means to find the best price of the product that we want to buy. As Mr Belleflamme mentions to his course, it can have bias: the search engine can favour certain sites, not be perfectly objective. Consumers are aware of these matters: it now our turn to be vigilant. I think that in few years, there will be a revolution: consumers will not agree anymore with the actual system of privacy. They will become aware that personal data are valuable and will want to sell it. For example, Google will maybe have to pay people to use its applications in order to collect personal data.
As examples mention in the post show, it can be advantageous for consumers to have targeted advertising. If the ads are not too intrusive, why do not have personal selection of them? It allows us to not waste time to make further research as the target advertising has already do it for us. It will maybe be better if consumer have the choice: share personal information in order to have target advertising or not. I think that a lot of people will agree because, despite the drawbacks, it can be very useful.
I have a subscription to Netflix and I often see recommended movies. Most of time, I like the selection made. I discover new movies thanks to the recommendation system. I do not see any disadvantage of this practise.
Until today, I find more advantages than disadvantages of the sharing of personal information. It generally helps me in my researches. However, I stay vigilant to information that I put on online site. For example, I do not mention where I live on Facebook or my phone number. It can be dangerous.
Private information belonging to a private individual, but the individual commonly may share with others for personal or business reasons. It may be considered a breach of privacy to disclose such information, but for most people its disclosure is not considered a serious matter.
According to the article, there are some benefits of sharing private information. 1. Behavior-based price discrimination. The… Read more
Private information belonging to a private individual, but the individual commonly may share with others for personal or business reasons. It may be considered a breach of privacy to disclose such information, but for most people its disclosure is not considered a serious matter.
According to the article, there are some benefits of sharing private information. 1. Behavior-based price discrimination. The developments in information technologies allow companies to keep track of their customers’ search and purchasing behavior and, based on this information, to develop detailed consumption profiles. Among other things, this availability of more and, in particular, better customer information makes the use of sophisticated price discrimination techniques possible. 2. Targeted advertising. The ability to monitor and analyze a consumer’s surfing habits makes the use of targeted advertising techniques feasible. 3. Recommendation systems. Companies analyze their customers’ past search or purchasing habits in order to be able to suggest items that a particular consumer is likely to enjoy.
I was very surprised to read that according to AT&T, the Texas-based telecommunications provider, customers between are willing to pay $29 and $62 a month in order to prevent your Internet provider from tracking and analyzing your browsing history. Despite all the benefits of sharing private information from the companies’ side, there are many reasons why customers are willing to pay so much money to prevent the companies to do so. For example, a person trying to avoid a stalker will be inclined to further restrict access to such personal information.Furthermore, a person’s SSN or SIN, credit card numbers, and other financial information may be considered private if their disclosure might lead to crimes such as identity theft or fraud. Some types of private information, including records of a person’s health care, education, and employment may be protected by privacy laws. Unauthorized disclosure of private information can make the perpetrator liable for civil remedies and may in some cases be subject to criminal penalties.
Another problem is that employees may not be aware of how their actions online may compromise company security. Educate employees as to how a simple click on a received link or a downloaded application can result in a virus infecting their computer and the network. Advise them not to click on suspicious links and to pay careful attention when providing personal information online.
As I mentioned, there are many benefits of sharing information online: Facilitates open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery; Allows employees to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links; Provides an opportunity to widen business contacts; Targets a wide audience, making it a useful and effective recruitment tool; Improves business reputation and client base with minimal use of advertising; Expands market research, implements marketing campaigns, delivers communications and directs interested people to specific web sites. But the company should be careful of sharing all the private information, since it can lead to frauds and crimes.
I think that a good choice in the repartition of disclosed and protected data is the better solution. I have experienced Google+. When I had to change my computer, I was already annoyed before starting to fill in all of my usernames and passwords. But with Google+ I had only to log in Google+. My Youtube did not have change… Read more
I think that a good choice in the repartition of disclosed and protected data is the better solution. I have experienced Google+. When I had to change my computer, I was already annoyed before starting to fill in all of my usernames and passwords. But with Google+ I had only to log in Google+. My Youtube did not have change and was automatically reusable. It was the same with a lot of websites. Then the earning of time was a right compensation of disclosing my personal data. I also tried Netflix. It is a real advantage to have propositions for the following movie. It is not a problem to give information like my movie tastes because I take more advantages of this than disadvantages.
All of this seems magical but the personal data must not override the simple personal information, my musical tastes, my preferred gender of movie and so on. For example, medical informations must stay protected.
One benefit of sharing personal information with firms is that you may receive an immediate monetary compensation for revealing your personal data or you may receive intangible benefits (Acquisti, 2010).
There is supplementary advantages for the targeted ads. They implies that the percentage of junk mail will be smaller than the case without targeted ads. According to the Omega Management Group Corp., seventy percent of respondents of a study states that they like ads tailored to their interests. The targeted ads may also be less intrusive (Acquisti, 2010). Note that targeted advertising is by no means limited to the Internet as Professor Paul Belleflamme said in an other article ‘What do you think of targeted advertising?’ on this website.
Prices might be reduced as an effect of a more efficient advertising and marketing. (Acquisti, 2010) It is also because targeted ads increase the return on investment of the firm (ROI) (3) and the fact that the competition increased (Belleflamme, April 2013).
According to me and my small aversion of sharing personal data, those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information. But more people are afraid of the flows of personal data on the internet. In the USA, more than 90 percent of Americans feel they’ve lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies. (5) The importance of this outweighing depends on the willingness to accept to share personal information. Then we cannot give an unique answer of this outweighing. But this uncertainty is often because of a lack of information about the benefits and the disadvantages of sharing personal data.
In my oppinion, if these benefits outweight the costs depend of two factors.On the one hand, the personal value that each individual gives to his personal and private information. On the other hand, the way of each individual benefits of the gains of the use and analisys of his information. If there is a benefit or a loss depends of… Read more
In my oppinion, if these benefits outweight the costs depend of two factors.On the one hand, the personal value that each individual gives to his personal and private information. On the other hand, the way of each individual benefits of the gains of the use and analisys of his information. If there is a benefit or a loss depends of each person.
Once you go online and create your first account, either an email adress orsocial networking, the disclosure of information is immediate. You reveal without thinking your name, date of birth, nationality … In Facebook or Twitter you open a window into your private life, your preferences and interests. The problem arises when you realize that this information that you have shared can be used by institutions, public and private, for purposes to which you have not given permission. In my opinion, here lies the crux of the matter: we have not accepted, at least not consciously the use our private data by others and not perceive any benefit from it. This is seen as a violation of our privacy. 78% of respondents to a survey think that service providers hold too much information about consumer preferences and behaviour and 73% would prefer to give specific approval before the collection of data.
However, there are ways to get tangible benefits disclosing information. There are several websites that promise you that if you answer a survey, giving your opinion about products and other websites, you will get prizes or even money. Furthermore, it is common practice in some companies offer coupons or discounts to customers in exchange for revealing personal data, but I’ve never been in that situation.
However, I have benefited from the targeted advertising. If advertising is not targeted to the right audience, it has no effect on the consumer and will be ignored and it will only be annoying. However if the ads that are displayed on the web pages you visit are selected according to your tastes and preferences are more likely to both you and the companies obtain benefits. On many occasions I have seen ads regarding content or products that had sought before, then I ended up buying these products.
The term Big Data refers to describe the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data produced from various types of sources, that could be climate information, satellite imagery or GPS signals. Also may involve personal data, information relating to an individual and can be anything from a name, a photo, an email adress, medical information or a computer IP adress. The main benefits are higher productivity and improved services, which aret he source of economic growth. If the top 100 EU manufacturers used Big Data, the savings worthed € 425 billion, and by 2020, Big Data analytics could boost EU economic growth by an additional 1,9% or, what it is the same, a GDP increase of € 206 billion.
In my oppinion, if these benefits outweight the costs depend of two factors.On the one hand, the personal value that each individual gives to his personal and private information. On the other hand, the way of each individual benefits of the gains of the use and analisys of his information. If there is a benefit or a loss depends of each person.
I don’t have a problem with my surfing habits being monitored. As explained in this article, sharing personal information tends to improve our surfing experience.
For example, advertising is kind of inevitable if we want to keep enjoying websites and social media platforms for free. So why not enjoy the targeted advertising that might show us other offers, perhaps more… Read more
I don’t have a problem with my surfing habits being monitored. As explained in this article, sharing personal information tends to improve our surfing experience.
For example, advertising is kind of inevitable if we want to keep enjoying websites and social media platforms for free. So why not enjoy the targeted advertising that might show us other offers, perhaps more interesting, than those we’ve already actively searched for?
I think consumers won’t see an issue with sharing their personal information, as long as it benefits them and if it doesn’t feel as intrusive. Finding out your daughter is pregnant, when she starts receiving coupons for baby clothes and cribs through the mail, feels a little bit more intrusive (Forbes). More on intrusive advertising, according to a survey by fastcompany.com, most customers don’t like location-based offers. Only 27% of surveyed customers were happy to receive offers on smartphones when they are near a certain retailer. Consumers show a clear aversion to their locations being tracked, as mentioned in the article. On the other hand, and I thought it would be interesting to mention as well, some banks like ING, are using information about their customers’ physical localisation in order to improve their service. For example, if a customer is on holiday abroad and the bank observes that the client’s bank account is running low, the bank might send a text to the client, asking if he would like the bank to transfer some money from his saving account etc. Not all customers agree to receive such messages from their bank, but those who do are very grateful to the bank when they get in such stressful situations. I guess in those cases, people don’t mind the intrusion, because they trust their bank.
What doesn’t benefit the consumer is for example the fact that Facebook “has a license to use your content in any way it sees fit”, as mentioned by Oliver Smith in an article for the Telegraph. This license applies to all photos and videos uploaded on Facebook. In that case, Facebook is simply making profit on the back of its users.
I believe that sharing personal information on the internet and this information being sold and used for different purposes, is a quite new concept. As a result, national and international policies still need to be set in place and this is a process that takes some time. Perhaps our perceptions of privacy are changing. By doing the research for this paper I observed that a lot of progress is being made in terms of targeted advertising or recommendation systems etc. Companies are starting to know which kind of targeted advertising is preferred over others. Also, companies now realise that trust is important and that it is often a factor that can determine whether an ad will feel as intrusive or not.
Finally, I’d say that sharing personal information benefits our consumer experience, but it is important that the consumer remains empowered and able to protest against what they experience as an invasion of their privacy.
Our perception of privacy might be changing and this is according to me the question raised by this article. What do we think is acceptable? Where is the boundary between improving customer experience and invasion of privacy?
We are living in a period of many changes and it is important to have such debates on privacy, so that policies can be set in place to protect our rights as consumers and citizens.
I peronnaly have no problem with the fact that my online informations are shared and exploited. Indeed, giving access to my personnal information can only be positive for me. Oriented advertising, price discrimination, recommandation system can only be beneficial for me. Nevertheless, I would like to insist that using personnal information is not new and not necessarily connected to internet.… Read more
I peronnaly have no problem with the fact that my online informations are shared and exploited. Indeed, giving access to my personnal information can only be positive for me. Oriented advertising, price discrimination, recommandation system can only be beneficial for me. Nevertheless, I would like to insist that using personnal information is not new and not necessarily connected to internet. I will pick one “real-life” example offering two benefits of sharing information presented in this article. Since years, Colruyt offers the possibility to the clients to have a Colruyt credit card. You can use this card to pay for your shopping, and Colruyt makes the list of all your purchases. Every month, the clients receive a promotional magazine giving them access to some personnal discount on articles they commonly buy. So, here, price discrimination and targeted advertising are benefic for the customers. I personnaly use this kind of service and I hardly think both companies and consumers benefits from it on the internet.
First, I rarely purchase products on internet, but I am aware of all the benefits when you intend to buy some products or services and thus enjoy the lower prices due to the price discrimination or are offered similar or connected products with the targeted advertising. Booking holidays is the only service I “pay” on internet, and it is clearly more easy to compare prices and characteristics of accomodations or flights when my internet provider share my information. I also don’t waste too much time searching for information because they are offered to me while I am surfing.
Secondly, I use YouTube a lot, recommandations improve my online experience because it allows me to discover new content or to find back videos I watched recently and thus reduce my search cost.
Like I exposed in my answers to the previous questions, reducing the searching costs is an obvious benefit for the consumer. Shopping on the internet become thus, quick and adapted to the consumers offering them products they will enjoy at a price they are ready to purchase avoiding them to visit several websites to find what they trully want. Besides the consumers benefits, sellers also benefit from these information sharing. They know the preferences of their consumers but they can use this tool to follow the evolution of their need and thus can adapt their product to fit with this evolution.
I personnaly can not say that cost may out weight the benefits after my answers I gave to the previous questions. However, I can understand that for consumers that are reluctant to let their internet provider use their information, cost out weight the benefits. Indeed, they have the perception that internet is pushing them to buy some articles when they see targeted advertising and are certain they will always be offered the most expensive products. In this case, they will lost a lot of time searching for what they may call, “real information” looking for cheapest products than those which are automatically presented to them.
1. What do you think?
First of all I think we are a little late by asking ourselves if we are oké with the fact that companies, the government and other institutions have access to some private information about us. Although thanks to the Internet, these privacy concerns become more visible and people start to question this more. However I have… Read more
1. What do you think?
First of all I think we are a little late by asking ourselves if we are oké with the fact that companies, the government and other institutions have access to some private information about us. Although thanks to the Internet, these privacy concerns become more visible and people start to question this more. However I have the feeling that people are forgetting that before the Internet became so prominent in our lives we also shared some private info about ourselves. For example every time you use your loyalty card at the supermarket you give some private information away about your shopping behavior and your preferences. I have the feeling that people do not make a big deal out of this but when we think about companies using our search queries on the Internet to find out our preferences we find this worrying, which in my opinion is not logical at all.
2. Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
As the text already mentioned, in some extent we are benefiting from this as a customer. This in terms of lower prices, increased price pressure on the online service providers, helps with processing an overwhelming supply or options to choose from.
These for me are all benefits from letting online service providers access my personal data. Another benefit that I think of is for instance when you use YouTube. When you are logged on with your email account, the next time you visit the website Google will propose some video’s to you in line with what you where looking at before. This is in my opinion rather useful for consumers because you do not need to remember the search query you used before to find a particular video. In other words it reduces search costs and it makes the overall experience nicer.
3. Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
Targeted advertising can be really convenient for consumers when the ads are in line with the customers their preferences and taste. Another benefit that is linked to this is that search costs and time of consumers can be decreased dramatically when firms use targeted advertising. This because if a customer is looking for some sport shoes on Zalando for example, the next time the he/she visits YouTube for example a pair of sport shoes will pop up and the add changes constantly. This is rather convenient because you do not have to browse the Internet to find some sport shoes thanks to targeted advertising.
4. Do those benefits out weight the costs of sharing personal information?
If the benefits out weight the costs or not will depend from customer to customer I think. Customers that are really fond of their privacy will probably do not think that the benefits out weight the costs. Customers that do not have many problems with giving their private information will be more open to it and will more easily see the advantages of it. However in my opinion there are more benefits to sharing personal information than costs. Especially behavioral based pricings has a lot of advantages for consumers and are undervalued by them. If consumers are more aware of the benefits it provides for them I think it would be much easier to convince them that sharing personal information is a good thing. There are more posts about the concerns than about potential benefits of sharing information on the Internet. In my opinion we should change that.
References:
Peacock, S. (2014, July). How web tracking changes user agency in the age of Big Data: the used user. Big Data & Society .
As seen in the e-marketing course, especially during a conference given by the company "Proxistore", the "remarketing" is a practice widely used by companies. It consists in analyzing the behavior of a person on a website. For example, a person will visit "Zalando" and click repeatedly on different links (for example, shoes, accessories, etc.) but in the end, this… Read more
As seen in the e-marketing course, especially during a conference given by the company “Proxistore”, the “remarketing” is a practice widely used by companies. It consists in analyzing the behavior of a person on a website. For example, a person will visit “Zalando” and click repeatedly on different links (for example, shoes, accessories, etc.) but in the end, this person won’t buy anything. It is at this point that the “remarketing” comes in. The goal is to serve ads, here with our example, Zalando, to encourage that person to return to the site and end up making a purchase . In my view, this practice has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that advertising is targeted, allowing us not to be too bothered by it because it interests us a minimum. However, this pushes us to buy and sometimes it bothers me, because if you decided not to pursue this purchase, it was probably for a good reason and it is useless to reconsider our decision.
Targeted advertising therefore has advantages. As mentioned in the text, users often save time for example when they are looking at a film list, it becomes smaller or it helps them more easily to find what they are looking through their previous research. However, I find that it can be scary sometimes. This can give the impression of being spied on all the time and can lead to less use of the internet and a decrease in data sharing.
Data sharing brings benefits such as saving time and targeted content but can also be seen with suspicion because users often don’t feel they control the shared information. If we take the case of sign-on systems, the act of going through another platform to share our information, we certainly save time, but it deprives us of control we can have about the information we want to share.
Many data now circulate everywhere thanks to this sharing, but I think that users don’t always realize what they give as information and are sometimes victims of the system.
I have personally benefited from sharing my information even though I wasn’t fully aware of it. During my exchange in Canada, we used to book our hotels for our travels on “Booking.com” and as I was making reservations I received many benefits, such as discounts on the next reservations or other benefits related to activities near the hotel.
Two enormous benefits of sharing personal information concerns the sharing with authorities such as the government and banks. First of all regarding the government, people like to know that the government has information to track down out-of-the-law people, such as criminals, terrorists etc. Another advantage is the sharing of information with the banks because in that way they can best protect their clients from potential hackers.
In the text, we talk mainly about benefits concerning users, but there are also many advantages for firms. As mentioned in the article “The economics of Personal data and the economics of privacy,” Acquisti (2010), firms may have a lot of information on their potential customers and assess trends that would interest them and avoid having too much products in stock or unsold products. Firms can also improve their offer and their services by analyzing the behavior of their consumers. Another argument concerns once again the targeted advertisements. Companies pay a relatively high price for their advertising to appear on various sites and reach potential consumers, the fact of benefit from this targeted advertising allows them to reach only people likely to be interested in their products and thus don’t waste money on advertising that won’t help.
In conclusion, I would say that the main disadvantage is the lack of control from the users. But in most cases the benefits outweigh the cost of sharing personal information because in most of the cases, it is a win-win situation between firms and consumers.
Sources:
Acquisti (2010). The economics of Personal data and the economics of privacy
Comments for Putting a price on privacy – are there benefits to sharing private information?
[…] by providing alternative revenue streams to keep consumer fees low. Some firms even offer explicit discounts for consumers that share their […]
[…] by providing alternative revenue streams to keep consumer fees low. Some firms even offer explicit discounts for consumers that share their […]
[…] by providing alternative revenue streams to keep consumer fees low. Some firms even offer explicit discounts for consumers that share their […]
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People are sharing more and more information about themselves but they do not feel so comfortable about the way their personal information and behavioral data are gathering. Is the sharing of information beneficial for consumers or has it just commercial purposes?
As exposed in this article, there are benefits for the customers even if our society talks more often about risks and warnings about this sharing. We could hope that it would also lead to an upgrade of performance monitoring and a better understanding of the customer needs. Another benefice is the help it could bring for more security and safety to the society. The information resources could be used to stop crime and fraud.
However, I’m a little suspicious about the real use of our data’s in practice. For example, I doubt about a possible increasing of competition. I’m wondering if the customers would not have less incentive to look for others buyers due to the relationship created by the company, owner of their data’s. It is clear that the sharing would certainly reinforce fidelity and engagement with partners.
Concerning the price discrimination, I already came back on an e-commerce website where prices have increased since my last visit for the offers I was interested in. It’s typically the case for online air travel booking websites. I find it surprising but that makes sense now with the reading of this article that if I find the good more valuable, I have to pay more. If it allows to have an increasing in the total consumer welfare, then it is an interesting advantage.
I think that there is in fact a real confidence crisis about the use of personal data’s. In UK, for example, only 19% of the population understand the value of this sharing and accept to give information in return to best services. And only 8% of UK population share easily information thinking they are impersonal and are totally confident of their future use.
In conclusion, there are indeed possible benefits for the consumers to share personal information. I think that more transparency from companies could lead to more sharing. The consumers need to be more confident about the use of their data’s and to see that they still have control on them. The companies should explain clearly the use of our information and give us the opportunity to control and remove them whenever we want.
In this case, I think that the benefits could outweigh the costs of sharing information for consumers.
BARTLETT., J., The Data Dialogue (2012) http://www.demos.co.uk/files/The_Data_Dialogue.pdf
http://informationsharing.org.uk/our-work/tools/scoping/how-does-the-partnership-assess-the-risks-and-benefits-of-the-information-sharing/
http://www.audit.wales/events/dare-share-sharing-personal-data-better-serve-citizens-and-communities
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The article defend the idea that we may benefit from sharing our private information through the Internet. That is not necessarily a claim that I would have support. Indeed, I believe that privacy should be protected and it should be a right for everyone to be able to monitor its own information. Yet this article probably allowed me to broad my view as it seems that it might turns out to be benefit for us to share our private information. In this sense, I believe that there is a trade-off between two opposite aspects: on the one hand the benefit that I can experiment if I share private information. On the other hand, the lost I occur depending on the value I place on the privacy of my information.
What is clear is that the quick degradation of the privacy during the last years has raised questions and controversies about privacy. Here, I will try to gain an overview of the situation of some aspects and try to weigh the pros and cons.. For this, I will investigate some of the benefits pointed out in the article:
With the availability of information in today’s digital economy, companies have more information about their customers. Thus, they can easily target consumers and practice price discrimination. The article made the point that price-discrimination does not necessarily make the consumer worse-off. In think that if we want to form a good opinion, we must underline the fact that the effects of such price-discrimination practices will not have the same impact in the case of monopoly than in the case of competition (1) . The possession of more detailed information about consumers allows firms to extract more surplus from each consumer but there is a conflicting effect in the sense that it might also exacerbate the price competition. This later point ties up with the present article according to which “the absence of price discrimination does not necessarily imply lower prices”.
The access to private information also allows companies to set up targeted advertising. If I support the fact that price-discrimination may benefit the consumers, I have more troubles with the targeted advertising. The media agency MEC conducted a study on this theme: the question was to know up to which point consumers agree to scarify their own private information in order to receive advertising message that only respond to their real expectations. They showed that after they explained the purpose of targeted advertising, people appear more inclined to accept it (2). Well, I don’t think it would be my case.
People generally don’t have a good opinion about targeted advertising. According to the common perception, it seems good for firms but bad for consumers. Yet, it still seems important to raise two points (3) : First, targeted advertising may make the ads more relevant for consumers. Second, consumers can choose to use adverting-avoidance tools (ADblock,…). Nonetheless, I still see targeted advertising as something not desirable. Indeed, advertisers track my content, my preferences and what I do without my consent. And even if I can install tools like ADblock, I still consider this practice as something rather negative.
Despite everything, I truly believe that apart from all the economical aspects, the ethical aspect which affect the privacy must not be neglected.
(1) Fudenberg, D., Villas-Boas, J.M., (2012), Price Discrimination in the Digital Economy, Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy,
Show lessAvailable : http://groups.haas.berkeley.edu/marketing/PAPERS/VILLAS/DigitalEconomy6-17-2012.pdf
(2) http://trends.levif.be/economie/high-tech/vie-privee-contre-pub-ciblee/article-normal-190169.html
(3) https://www.ipdigit.eu/2013/04/what-to-think-of-targeted-advertising/
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The growing volume of data generated over the last years has brought about many discussions regarding digital privacy issues. Thus, the European Union has reformed its data protection legal framework in order to protect citizens and to regulate the environment for businesses (1). Indeed, whereas for companies it is obvious that the access to personal data is an important tool to improve targeting and segmenting customers and thus, increase long-term profits, for consumers the benefits are not always that evident and many consumers remain sceptical. However, there are some significant benefits for consumers in sharing their personal data which we will take a look at in the following part.
First of all, the access to personal data enables companies to improve customers’ digital experience. As mentioned in the article, consumers benefit from targeted advertising as it provides them with relevant information suited to their individual interests. In addition to that, contrary to common belief, price discrimination which is rendered possible due to better customer information, does not necessarily put consumers in a disadvantageous situation as some consumers will pay a lower price for a given good or service.
Besides this, the sharing of data enhances innovation. In fact, the availability of data has led to the creation of several services or technologies that we majorly enjoy for free, such as language translation tools or digital mapping technologies. On top of that, the access to information, especially customer information, enables companies to better respond to customers’ needs by improving their product or service resulting in an increased customer satisfaction. (2)
Moreover, a recent study has shown that consumers are actually willing to share their personal data provided they gain an added value. According to this study, two main factors determine if a consumer is willing to share his personal data or not, namely the trust he has in the company and the potential added value he gets from sharing his data. In other words, even protective consumers do not mind sharing their personal information as long as they benefit from relevant offers and value. (3)
To conclude, it is difficult to state if the benefits of sharing personal information outweigh the costs. Indeed, this really differs from one consumer to another as consumers do not share the same attitude towards privacy issues nor do they have the same virtual behaviour or activities and thus, do not gain the same value from sharing personal data. As far as I am concerned, I admit that until recently I have not given that much thought to what companies actually do with my private data. Today, even though there will always remain a certain fear that my personal data will fall in the wrong hands, I believe that I also benefit from companies’ access to personal data by having an improved customer experience. Indeed, I enjoy several digital services for free and I prefer getting information or advertisement which is aligned with my interests. Finally, despite being in favour of sharing personal data to some extent, I am convinced that a certain level of regulation is needed to ensure consumers’ protection.
References:
Show less(1) http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/
(2) http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/09/16/big-data-collection-has-many-benefits-for-internet-users
(3) https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/3850/study-shows-that-consumers-are-willing-to-share-personal-data-if-the-benefits-and-brand-are-right
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As introduction, we can ask ourselves : « how did we get there ? ». I think that the most likely response to this question comes from the last progresses in information technology. In fact, these progresses and the transformation of the advanced economies into service economies have made possible for organizations to monitor, collect and analyze increasing amounts of individual data (what they called the « Big Data »). Furthermore, the reduction of cost of storing information allow companies to record every details of each customer and his transactions. In this article, such different benefits from sharing private information are highlighted. Four techniques are explained : behavior-based price discrimination, targeted advertising, recommendation systems and single sign-on systems.
Other benefits can be drawn from letting online service providers accessing our personal data than those mentioned above in the article. Let’s take the example of target advertising to begin: understanding customers and their habits allows firms to save time and money in the sense that they do not insist on proposing ads and services to clients uninterested about their products. As a second example, it is shown in several articles that personal data also enable personalized pricing. However, consumers are often unwilling to accept being price discriminated for fear that they would end up paying more for the same product or service. Different studies demonstrate that by rewarding consumers for disclosing personal information it is possible to achieve a situation where first-degree price discrimination is mutually advantageous and both buyers and users gain by adopting such a pricing model.
In my personal opinion, we share today our personal information more easily than ever online. I think that this comes from the loss of difficulty to trust others by sharing personal data in exchange of more comfort. In fact, if we take the example of Facebook, we do it without realizing it. After signing up and giving any kind of personal data (age, sex, location, …) you are quickly invite to like some pages, to join some groups, to take part in different events, etc. The contents of our page and personal data allow Facebook to target ads. For instance, if I go on holidays on NY, Facebook will understand it and it will understand that I’m a traveler. The travel company will be able to say later “I want to target him for other long-distance trips” and Facebook will arrange ads for travelling in my personal page. This technique called “targeted advertising” (as explained in the article) allows Facebook to win more than 14 billion euros last year and a study shows that each user makes 11 euros for the “American Giant” every year. In my day-to-day life I’m often facing with this kind of activities mentioned above. Nevertheless, most of the time I do not disagree with the ads I receive on Facebook or others like Youtube, Google, …
In conclusion, we can say that everything we do on the web, from our social media interactions to our shopping on Amazon, is driven by complex mathematical formulae that are invisible, we can’t get away from that. All these analyses of personal data are implemented in order to increase welfare, lower search costs and reduce economic inefficiencies. However, one has to bear in mind that these activities can be a source of serious power imbalances between those who hold the data and those whose data is controlled.
References
(1) http://www.businessesgrow.com/2014/02/20/whatsapp/
Show less(2) http://www.rtl.be/info/monde/international/voici-comment-facebook-gagne-de-l-argent-grace-a-nous-758683.aspx
(3) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/internet-death-privacy-google-facebook-alex-preston
(4) A., Acquisti. (2010). The Economics of Personal Data and the Economics of Privacy. Online on https://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/46968784.pdf
(5) A., Acquisti. (2013). The Economics of Privacy: Theoretical and Empirical Aspects. Online on http://cusp.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/C03-acquisti-chapter.pdf
(6) T., Rayna. (2015). Pricing music using personal data: mutually advantageous first-degree price discrimination. Online on http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-014-0165-7
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What do you think? Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
Indeed, more and more of website use our private information. There are obviously good sides like bad sides. Even if the most of people are opposed from data use, there are not real solutions to avoid that. Pay for prevent this is one of them. Also, people make a difference between personal information and behavioral data. In this case, behavioral data are less important than personal information (1). They are maybe more interested to protect their personal information than their data about behavior. But in my opinion I don’t ready to pay just for protect my information. The information that I put on Internet is not secret or very personal. They allow mainly websites to recommend me some products concerning research that I have made before. So, this sharing information allows me to increase the choices and improved the quality of my decisions (1). In addition, it’s true that there are several advantages of sharing private information.
Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
In addition to the advantages mentioned in the article, people notice also the “convenience and time-saving when shopping and doing other transactions, if personal data were already held” (1) like an advantage to the sharing information with companies. Indeed, if they know your preferences, they can easier target the products or services that are susceptible to please you. Thereby, “businesses create personalized services that rely on a regular process of feedback to improve them” (3). Consequently, sharing information eliminates information asymmetries and it participates to improve efficiency of transactions between customers and sellers online. Moreover, in the world where people ask more and more to have personal interactions and attentions, the websites take advantage of the sharing data to correspond as much as possible to the customers in front of them. So, it is not surprising that “online platforms like Google and Facebook use the personal data they acquire to enhance users’ experiences and provide more personally relevant services” (4).
Also, a “study emphasizes the transformational potential of Big Data and underscores how the “volume, variety, and velocity” of information are redefining many aspects of government, commerce, and private life” (2). Indeed, with all the information collected and present on Internet, the companies can adapt and broaden their offers to touch the most of customers’ possible. They can understand their customer easier and faster and adapt their business to future growths (2). The collect of information and market studies take less time than before because most of data are already in databases of companies. Those who go combined strategy for Big Data and privacy of information may become influential in the future industry (2). The Big Data is a huge resource for the economic industry and deal with it is the good way to develop its business. Provide the protection of the data and increase the trust of people are important issues if companies want take advantage of the mass of data in circulation.
And do those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information?
Maybe not. The main negative point about the sharing private information, concerns the lost of control of their personal data. The fraud or identity thefts are real public fears. I think that the problem is not that people don’t want sharing information with companies or other organization. It is more questions of trust and what these organizations make with our information. People are afraid that their personal information fall between bad hands, “be lost, stolen, hacked and leaked” (1). Also, the unsolicited marketing and advertising are also a huge inconvenient for the people. They are always solicited by advertising which they do not need in every website where they go. Many of them tent to block advertising online because of the high number of targeted advertising that they receive.
Source :
(1) : ScienceWise (2014). Big Data : public views on the collection, sharing and use of personal data by government and companies. 1-27. Report online : http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/assets/Uploads/SocialIntelligenceBigData.pdf
(2) : PWC (2014). Big Data : big benefits and imperiled privacy. 1-7. Report online : https://www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/publications/assets/pwc-big-data-big-benefits.pdf
(3) : Communications consumer panel research report (2011). Online personal data : the consumer perspective. 1-37.
(4) : Liem C. and Petropoulos G. (2016). The economic value of personal data for online platforms, firms and consumers. Bruegel. Online : http://bruegel.org/2016/01/the-economic-value-of-personal-data-for-online-platforms-firms-and-consumers/
(5) : Rainie L. and Duggan M. (2016). Privacy and information sharing. PewResearchCenter. Online : http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/01/14/privacy-and-information-sharing/
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The increasingly growing digital economy has given the rise to 3 phenomenons among others impacting consumer’s behaviour; price discrimination, targeted advertising and recommendation systems. These phenomenons base their functioning on the ability to collect consumers’ information. Although this Big Data Collection contributes to economic benefits through enabling marketers to tailor better digital services, consumers do not always perceive it positively. On the contrary, they seem to be particularly reluctant. Indeed, digital advertising companies raise the matter of private data collection practices and are nowadays feeling the pressure to reveal what is hidden behind the opaque redistribution of that knowledge. As a result, an information ethics debate has been launched pointing out the privacy issue [1][2].
Due to technological advances, many privacy and data-protection laws have become obsolete leading to gaps in the EU legal framework [3]. The commissions are working on it but have not satisfied consumers so far as regulations always tend to prevail economic aspects over social aspects [2]. Moreover, the commissions face a real challenge in defining what personal data is and its lifecycle.
Still, mutual benefits are to be taken into account.
Let us first consider price discrimination. Firms can nowadays track consumers’ behaviour in order to charge them a different price for the same good [1]. Obviously, when it deals with prices and the way you treat your consumers it is expected to raise controversy. At first glance, consumers would typically refuse being tracked, thinking they are the victim of price discrimination. But do they realize that they also achieve significant benefits through that price discrimination ? Not really. However, it has been observed that in an economy where price discrimination does not exist, consumers end up paying higher prices mainly due to the fact there is no differentiation between high and low valuators [4].
Besides this, big data has changed advertising forever. Indeed, companies rely on consumers’ data to develop promotional activities. Therefore, consumers are arguing that they are constantly being the target of ads. However, those ads are perfectly in line with their latest research and needs and thus, reduce searching costs. In my view, big data is not blame for targeted ads as long as those are not too intrusive.
Big data has brought many discussions forward uring the last year but will remain existent with or without negative aspects on consumers.
Therefore, the questions we should ask ourselves would be whether strong regulations on big data are to be imposed or not in order to protect consumer’s privacy ?
This is a controversial question. However, I believe that strong regulation is not needed.
First and foremost, technologies are going faster than lawmakers which will make it too challenging for them to provide consumers with accurate legislation.
Second, Big Data has strong positive effects on society which can not be denied. For instance, the Big Data collection leads to a significant higher level of innovation such as the creation of language translating tools or mobiles traffic services where the experience of consumers matter to create an accurate and complete service [5]. Besides this, in fields such as healthcare, big data provides doctors with millions of cases analysis enabling them to detect uncommon diseases [3]. As a result, strong regulation on data could prevent those innovations.
Third, I am convinced that consumers will get used to it. Indeed, as for every new invention, consumers find concerns to debate about but will finally accept it.
Moreover, an opportunity for business developers is to be seen. In fact, many consumers considering Big Data as a threat will be looking for tools helping them to protect their privacy. Therefore, companies can seize that opportunity and develop a tool to automate that privacy.
As a result, I think that what governments need to do is not creating strong regulations but educating consumers to develop a critical sense regarding their online interactions leading to a better digital literacy. [5]
[1] http://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/pd/price-discrimination/
Show less[2] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/536455/IPOL_STU(2015)536455_EN.pdf
[3] https://www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/publications/assets/pwc-big-data-big-benefits.pdf
[4] https://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/05/putting-a-price-on-privacy-are-there-benefits-to-sharing-private-information/
[5] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/09/16/big-data-collection-has-many-benefits-for-internet-users
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There are advantages and disadvantages:
(1) First, there can be a problem of intimacy. We can take a similar example to AT&T such as the postal service. The postal service would make the offer of putting discount shipping if you allow them to read what you sent in your letters. AT&T does the same at the Internet level, which is huge.
Another point we can think about is the price. We don’t know if in the long term the “poor” could be able to support this extra fee in order to protect their privacy. In other words, the privacy is reserved only for the rich.
And we could say that they force the “poor” to allow them to use our data for advertising purposes. (1)
However, it is interesting to have a lower price to pay and comfortable suited advertisement. (A counter-argument for the suited advertisement is that in general advertising in the Internet are often well targeted and that we don’t need the suited advertisement and the offers that goes with it.)
A solution could be to simply ignore the advertising if we don’t like it, or use applications as Adblock. (which means a decrease in the advertisement revenue). Did you ever take into account the application Adblock in the advertisement Market?
In my opinion, I think I would be better with sharing my personal data with GigaPower and letting companies collect my data and creating my consumer’s profile.
It is at a lower price. I could benefit from the suited and targeted advertising and suited offers for the products I want. More appropriate recommended niche products particular for me. It could reduce my search costs and put downward the prices. However, what are the disadvantages?
As I said in the beginning, from an ethical point of view, the right of privacy is a fundamental right. And nobody wants this right to be removed.
Thus, if we don’t pay the extra fee, the internet provider will know everything about us, where we are, what we are doing in any time, etc.…
Moreover, through the smartphone, there is even more a threat of invading our privacy. In the website (2) is exposed the idea of an application for smartphone that encrypts all the data. So the spying can be avoided.
Hence, a solution can be for the consumer to encrypt its data to a lower price (At the internet level, we can use the VPN at $5-10 per month (3)) than the extra free for data privacy protection. (4)
Eventually, we don’t know exactly who recuperate the data collected. The safety is also an important concern. Indeed, we don’t know who has access to our personal data and we don’t control what is done with those data.
In conclusion, the situation is still unclear. It will depend on the preferences of the consumers. A person that has monetary preferences will not pay the fee for the privacy where the person that has privacy preferences will. There are a lot of advantages but also important concerns. The benefits could certainly outweigh the costs of sharing personal information if we know exactly who has access to the personal data and if we can control them.
(1) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/20/att-price-on-privacy
Show less(2) http://www.forbes.com/sites/edmundingham/2015/11/02/putting-a-price-on-privacy-the-app-that-offers-you-military-grade-data-encryption/#62c7a1841b64
(3) http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2014/03/07/want-privacy-on-the-internet-then-you-need-a-vpn/#1e6cea289b73
(4) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/20/att-price-on-privacy
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As the global digitalization becomes more and more important, digital marketing represents today an mandatory way to reach customers for companies. Thanks to digitalization, companies enjoy from an increasing number of manners to track the customers by being able to gather private information online in order to predict their preferences and behaviors with extreme precision. Because of its outstanding value, information data represents a real monetary role, as many transactions between online companies involve information exchange.
Such method enables customers to benefit from offers and advertisement that are tailored to their individual preferences. Further, by receiving multiple similar offers, costumers enjoy from an easy way to compare and look for the best deal on the market.
However, such practices also raise controversy about customer privacy. According to some, because of this privacy violation, many consumer protection laws are not respected anymore. Perceived privacy concern from the customers’ point of view can come from different sources (Ashworth, 2006). Privacy concerns arise when customers feel they lose control over their personal information. Control can be measured by the awareness of the information collection from the customer’s point of view. The user wants to know when his information is collected, and to give prior permission to such practice. Further, the perceived control can be influenced by the way the information collected is used. Users are more reluctant when they know their personal information will be communicated to third parties. Indeed, user tracking can be perceived as very invasive. The privacy concern is often raised and can involve important polemics within huge companies (Ashworth, 2006). According to a survey, out of the 80% of users tracked by a spyware on their computer, 95% have not given their explicit permission to be so. Facebook, for instance, is often under the spotlights because of criticism for gathering and selling user data to third parties (Morran, 2014).
According to a survey, users tend to be even more reluctant depending on the sensibility of the data and the compensation they receive for communicating their private information (Ashworth, 2006).
The question is whether it is the government’s role in this matter. Some believe the government should proactively defend consumers, which would further increase their confidence and thus develop commerce. Others believe consumers should manage their privacy by themselves to not interfere with the market efficiency, which lead to more innovation and more choices for consumers (Ashworth, 2006).
One way to resolve the tension between consumers and online companies could be to collect information in an anonymous way. By doing this, customers have more truth and are more willing to purchase, while companies enjoy of information and increased loyalty (Hoffman, 2014).
Sources:
Show less– Morran, C. (2014). Facebook Is Now Selling Your Web-Browsing Data to Advertisers, Consumerist, https://consumerist.com/2014/06/12/facebook-is-now-selling-your-web-browsing-data-to-advertisers/
– Hoffman, D. et al. (1999). Building Consumer Trust Online. Communications of the ACM, 42(4), p.80-85
– Ashworth, L. et al. (2006). Marketing Dataveillance and Digital Privacy: Using Theories of Justice to Understand Consumers’ Online Privacy Concerns, Journal of Business Ethics, 67, p.107-123
– Solove, D. (2007). The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet, Yale University Press, 18p.
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As we all know, benefits of the internet are well established but at a certain cost, which is our privacy as well as our security.
Sharing private information has also a lot of downsides, costs. For instance, when you subscribe to different platforms or company-websites with a Google+ account, you receive an overwhelming number of undesired mails, spams. If you want to unsubscribe all of them, it will take you some precious time. In addition to this, your subscription may also lead to unwanted new contacts. It rapidly overflows your mailbox.
In addition to this, advertising coming from the sites you consulted, can also be overwhelming and take to much space on your web page.
Another thing people worry about is the risk of being hacked. Sharing information can be beneficial by improving internet experience but it might « destroy » your life if some hackers take control over your privacy.
A Pew Research Institute study has shown that 86% of Americans have taken action to maintain anonymity online (deleting cookies, encrypting mails, protecting IP address). Another interesting staitistic is that 50% of internet users are afraid of the information available about them.
People might be afraid of « Big Brother 2.0 ».
But besides this, benefits are manifold. One day, in the near future, with information sharing, you will enter a shop for groceries and you will instantly receive a text with an automatically generated shopping list that includes the location of the aisles where you can find what you need. If information sharing leads to those great benefits, I say yes.
REFERENCES :
Show lesshttp://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/14/key-findings-privacy-information-sharing/
http://dailytrojan.com/2010/04/25/online-information-sharing-has-its-benefits/
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The article talks about the benefits to share your private information online. These benefits could be as well for the consumers, for the companies or for the government. I will try to quote other benefits and to express my opinion. But first, in order to provide some context for this comment, I will give some statistics to express how consumers see the sharing of private information.
In UK survey, more than half (55%) of consumers surveyed say they will share their personal information to get better offers and rewards, but only 8% feel they receiving those benefits. In addition, less than a quarter (23%) of consumers says that the communications they receive from businesses are highly relevant to them. And 80% of survey respondents were willing to share information if the company informs them upfront about how it will be used. Moreover, another study on global consumer attitudes on personal data also concluded that consumers are more inclined to share their data if they saw a direct value to themselves and that consumers were much more likely to share their personal information if it was used by the service provider only.
The first additional benefit that I could profit by letting online service providers accessing my personal data would be the geo-location. Some apps are using this kind of information to provide a useful service such as Google maps, uber and so on. And thus, by letting know where I am, I could for example see which store is close from my position, or which uber car I could take.
The second additional benefit is that this sharing could improve knowledge management. Indeed, partner organizations could develop a better understanding of the work undertaken by each organization. With this amelioration, the companies could be more efficient and thus provide better services and the public organizations with this improvement of the knowledge management could better serve the common good.
The third benefits will also talk about the public services but more in details. The data collected on public services could persuade local partner to invest in Community budgets. In addition, “data sharing between agencies will be essential to enable the creation of whole-family facing services where people who require services from a range of agencies do not have to repeatedly fill in forms provided by different agencies that seem unable to share information securely between themselves”. Moreover, Government could protect us better with our private information, especially in matter of terrorism.
The final benefit is that they may be financial benefits such as the reduction in time an individual spends in hospital, when they can be discharged to an appropriate care setting. Indeed, by letting the different hospitals and doctors have an access to our private medical data, we could spare time because they will not have to phone to each other, to wait to our medical file and so on.
In conclusion, I will express my opinion. What is the price to share my information ? More security, more efficient companies, public sector with more revenues and a better health services. Personally, I think it’s worth the money. It doesn’t bother me very much that big companies have my private information and that they can do survey or advertising campaign with it. But I think everybody should know about it and should know which value they will benefit from it. This must not be done in secret, and it is good enough for the government.
D. Praditya.(2015). Benefits and Challenges in Information Sharing Between the Public and Private Sectors. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
http://informationsharing.org.uk/benefits-information-sharing/
http://www.cyberalert.com/blog/index.php/consumers-will-share-personal-data-with-brands-for-a-price/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/12/public-privacy-perceptions/
http://bruegel.org/2016/02/uber-and-the-economic-impact-of-sharing-economy-platforms/
https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/3850/study-shows-that-consumers-are-willing-to-share-personal-data-if-the-benefits-and-brand-are-right
https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2015/09/motivating-customers-share-personal-data-fs.html
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/Public-Private%20Information%20Sharing.pdf
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Nowadays, consumers are attracted more than ever by companies which are offering personalized services. Most of today’s consumers are ready to share their personal information. Nevertheless, consumers only agree to share more in-depth information’s (access of mobile phone data, geo-tracking, etc…) in exchange of a valuable service. Consumers expects transparency about information’s they give and the way companies used them. Ultimately, consumers need insurance that they can stop the flow of information’s whenever they want. In other words, customer is looking for a trust-based relationship. Indeed, as consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy, loss of trust translates into lost opportunities and revenues for companies. Recent high profile data breaches have pushed consumers to escape from service providers that did not protect personal data. For example, in 2014 [1], eBay has been hacked and it had a huge negative impact on its customer trust.
The reality is that companies understood that personal data is one of the most powerful tool ever made by humans. This revolutionary discovery is like always a double-edged sword. On one hand, there is concrete positive externalities regarding the use of big data, such as personalized products/services, faster/better decision making for companies and cost Moreover, “the main advantage of Big Data is that it can reveal patterns between different sources and data sets, enabling useful insights. Let’s think for example of health, food security, intelligent transport systems, energy efficiency and urban planning” [2]. On the other hand, smaller company start to use this tool (to a lesser extent) which is leading to some excess. Indeed, in this article, we have the example of an internet provider which has created a new pricing strategy: they offer a high-speed broadband service for a certain amount (99$ per month) and are allowed to perform deep packet inspection, in order to” monitor all the internet traffic of their subscribers and collect data on the content of those communications.” But this fee drops to 70 $ if their customers share their personal information. By doing this, they are discriminating customers who have a smaller buying power. In simple words, Internet service providers make use of their privileged position in the network to make pressure on consumers. The real point is therefore to determine whether benefits from sharing personal information is really valuable or not. In my case, I managed to find only two positive impacts: the sign-on systems which definitively makes me save time and the fact that I’m not being spammed by all kind of advertising which don’t even concern me. According to me, benefits made from sharing personal information depends on the behaviour of consumers and the balance between the value they give to this benefits compared to earnings made by companies. It has to be balanced otherwise, the only winners are companies. Nevertheless, when examples like AT&T show-up, this is very scary.
Concerning the future development, I think that big data will be crucial and its role in future medicine will lead to a lot’s of revolutionary treatment. On the other hand, only few giants like Facebook and google have the monopole on data. Therefore, these one have a durable competitive advantage compared to the rest of the world.
As a conclusion, I can say that Big Data and issues concerning privacy is becoming a real challenge. Information regarding individual’s health, location, electricity use, online activity and so forth can be publicised, raising concerns about profiling, discrimination, exclusion. We can’t afford a loss of control. Big Data analytics does not always involve personal data, but when it does, it should comply with the rules and principles of data protection.
References:
[1] http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/
[2] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/data-protection-big-data_factsheet_web_en.pdf
[3 ]http://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/1206858/should-businesses-put-a-price-on-privacy
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In order to present what I have learned from my researches, I decided to divide the content of my comment into 4 main parts. Therefore, after having explained what is meant by this “Privacy” concept, I will decline its main risks and negative aspects, mainly from the users point of view. Thereafter, I will raise the opportunities and implied by the disruptive “Big Data” for the users as well as for companies and the “economy as a whole” and I will finally conclude with my personal opinion. This way, in my conclusion, I will try to assess the respective weights of the costs and benefits of sharing personal information in order to measure the resulting impact on people.
1. Concept definition
The access, tracking and exploitation of our online browsing history raise concerns about our privacy and pushes users to escape from service providers that do not adequately protect their personal data. Actually the latter concept is part of a much more general one, called “Big Data Collection”. Big Data refers to large amounts of different types of data produced from various types of sources such as people, machines or sensors. In the analyzed situation, Big Data involves personal information collected by online service providers from their networking activity, online browsing, computer IP address, …
Then, online companies use the gathered information to implement behaviour-based price discrimination, using detailed consumption profiles previously developed and their expected valuation of the product (willingness to pay).
2. Risks and negative externalities
First of all, it is obvious that Internet users do not like their privacy to be violated. Data collection may seem them too intrusive and invasive what can make feel them like if they didn’t control anything anymore. Unfortunately, ensuring personal data protection becomes more challenging as information is multiplied and shared ever more widely around the world. Information regarding individual’s health, location, electricity use, online activity and so forth can be publicized, raising concerns about profiling, discrimination, exclusion and loss of control. Moreover, we never know who uses our private information and to what extend, and this may lead to ethical drifts such as the one concerning Google and Facebook selling their consumers information to the NSA.
3. Benefits and positive externalities
Despite all the negative points listed above, the number of positive externalities remains significant. In fact, it appears that data collection can be used to tailor pricing and product offerings, which enhance consumer welfare and increase firms׳ profits.
Even if the text already points out lots of benefits with respect to different aspects such as targeted advertising and recommendations systems, my researches allowed me to raise other interesting and sometimes unexpected ones.
a. From the user point of view:
The benefits of private data analysis are varied and extends to lots of areas such as health, food, security, intelligent transport system, energy efficiency, urban planning. This way, such an access to our personal information can improve social services quality and suitability, strengthen security, personalize services and make increased availability of relevant information. For instance, Scientists can use big data in research that can improve human well-being. As a matter of fact, huge volumes of information and patient data have helped detect drug interactions, allowing them to design and implement optimal drug therapies while inducing reduction medical expenditures and indirect costs associated with lower productivity.
Morevoer, as mentioned above, big data can also improve the performance of services provided by government agencies. For example, big data helps law enforcement agencies to deploy resources more efficiently, respond quickly and increase presence in crime prone areas. Big data can also help fight the spread of communicable diseases. This way, a retrospective analysis of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti showed that mining data from Twitter and online news reports could have given the country׳s health officials an accurate indication of the disease׳s spread with a lead time of two weeks.
b. From companies and the economy as a whole point of view
In this case, the balance between benefits and costs is clearly less nuanced. Effectively, through ensuring higher productivity, the concept of big data clearly offers lots of opportunities and growth perspectives. As a matter of fact, The use of Big Data by the top 100 EU manufacturers could lead to savings worth € 425 billion, and by 2020, Big Data analytics could boost EU economic growth by an additional 1.9%, which means a GDP increase of € 206 billion. In European countries such as Germany, Great-Britain, Luxembourg, the “big data” constitutes a booming and disruptive market, what drive innovative technology companies to make significant investments. In this regard, Apple is, for instance, investing €1.7 Billion in new European Data Centres.
4. My personal opinion
First of all, as Internet users we have to be conscious that if companies exploit our personal digital information, their first goal is not to increase consumers welfare but to maximize their own profits. Nevertheless, data collection can induce a lot of positive externalities in terms of economical aspects as well as in other terms such as health, energy, public services and so on.
In my opinion, it would be a mistake not to exploit this great opportunity to renew a little bit the economy of some European countries, which are sometimes at the end of their rope. However, this would request a lot of regulations in order to prevent damaging drifts and total losses of control.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:8888/science/article/pii/S0308596114001542#s0015
Show lesshttp://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/data-protection-big-data_factsheet_web_en.pdf
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This article presents some advantages that people can have by sharing private information on Internet. I believe that sharing our information can be something positive if it is done in a correct way.
As explained in the article, big data’s and information delivered by consumers are helpful for targeted advertising, recommendation systems or sign-on systems. It helps the consumer to improve its virtual experience.
I believe that the sharing of information and big data’s are going to improve our “real life experience” as well. In 2013, Apple made a nearly invisible launch for the public during its annual conference (WWDC): The iBeacon. The iBeacon is a protocol that is able to detect smartphones and tablet in a limited range and then to send a message to the device through Bluetooth. As it is installed at the entrance of some stores, the iBeacon can detect people when they enter the store (or even when they just walk past the store) and send a promotion message to the client’s device. It gives an incentive for people to visit the store and to buy something. That is where the technology currently stands.
But let us imagine that the little device is also connected to database and can recognize who is the owner of the phone. We can easily conceive that, when we will walk in front of the store, the iBeacon will be able to recognize us, to analyse our points of interest of the moment and to send us a personalized promotion for something we are looking for.
And it is not the only possible kind of application for such a device. For example, an iBeacon at the entrance of an emergency department will directly send all your personal information to the doctors. It will allow a faster and more efficient patient care from the doctors.
Of course, to be really efficient, those beacons need to have access to a lot of information and people have to give those. Nevertheless, according to the success of the pricing strategy of AT&T, people are ready to pay to avoid the giveaway of information. This situation is due to the fact that people are not aware that they can gain from the sharing of privacy and most of them think it is just an intrusion into their private life. The technology is there, but people are maybe not ready to accept it yet.
To conclude this comment, I would like to give my thoughts about the sharing of private information. My opinion is that, as Internet users, we cannot avoid the sharing of our information and, to be honest, it does not really bother me that much. I can understand that the fact that, for example, Google is making money from my last visit on one of their platform may seem a bit “borderline” for some people. But if it allows to improve my user experience and to keep the service free then I can accept it. Indeed, in my opinion, the cost of giving information is smaller than the benefit I can gain with a better virtual experience.
Resource:
Show lesshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon, consulted on May 8, 2016
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It is true that sharing personal data can bring benefits to the consumer. As explained in the article, it is a good way for companies to have a nearly perfect segmentation of the market. As companies know what each customer needs by analyzing personal/browsing data, consumers have now access to personalized offers and advertising. Besides, the fact that websites can sell our data to other companies can also lead to cheaper products for the final consumer because data selling is an additional source of revenues for them.
Another benefit for consumers is that data collection can lead to more innovation. If companies have access to information about consumers’ tastes and expectations, they can elaborate new products, answering better to customers’ needs. These new products will also probably be cheaper because the big data is an inexpensive (and sometimes even free) way for companies to collect information. Consumers have therefore potentially access to new, better and cheaper products.
However, I personally do not think that these benefits outweigh the risks of sharing data. Letting companies have access to your data can indeed lead to a lot of (direct or indirect) disadvantages.
First, consumers do not like to be observed but they are conscious that companies collect their data. This situation can lead to a distrust-based relationship between customers and companies. If the customers do not trust the ads they receive, they will lose time on comparison, which will lead to increased search costs for them. Besides, it is never a good thing to have trust issues in a transaction. This problem is emphasized when companies sell data to others because consumers do not know where their data will eventually arrive. Anyway, for me, this risk could nonetheless be outweighed by the advantages of Big Data for the customers as the price is finally one of the most important criteria for consumers.
However, the fact that these data could be stolen or published is another problem for them. They probably do not feel concerned about this issue when browsing the internet but it could result to a huge cost for them if their personal information are not only known by a company but by everyone, because their data could be used by groups for malicious purposes (the government, for example).
The system of personalized advertising may also present risks:
Without falling in conspiracy theory, this system could be used to manipulate and, for instance, to have an influence on your vote. As an example, Facebook could easily know what we are sensitive and concerned about. People having access to these data and to personalized advertising systems could play on that, which will lead to a loss of “free will” for the consumer.
Finally, the most important problem for me as a consumer is the “algorithmic cage”. Algorithms used by companies for personalized advertising is a huge brake to products/sells diversity as they will only show me products perfectly corresponding to my past research. We are therefore forced to consume always more of the same. For example, if I am looking for a BMW 3 series on Autoscout24, advertising will only show me BMW’s and its size/price competitors in the following days but I would perhaps be happy to find a little surprising Mazda or Toyota, even if it does not correspond to my first will (I personally experienced this situation 🙂 ).
To conclude, this sentence [1] is, for me, a perfect summary of the situation: “Finally, the problem is not stalking or the plethora of advertising […] but more the lack of value creation for the customer. If companies used data to create value for each customer, data collecting would, today, not be such a big deal.”
The real problem is that your personal information can be diffused and used by people you never agreed. So for me, the advantages of data collection for the customers could outweigh all these problems if and only if :
-they can control the situation and have the right to be totally forgotten
-if they know who really has access to this information
-if they have control on how deep algorithms interfere in their private life
The AT&T U-verse offer is a first answer to this last problem as they ask a different price to have access to browsing data or browsing AND video data.
[1] https://dataintrusion.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/big-data-quels-benefices-pour-les-consommateurs/
Show less[2] http://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/cercle-107117-le-big-data-et-le-consommateur-1031238.php#
[3] http://datamanagement-le-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Infographie_Benefices_clients_des_big_data_marketing.pdf
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In my opinion, sharing personal data about consumers’ behavior can be very interesting for the internet users. At the first sight, I think that it’s normal to apprehend this but I believe that once you experienced the benefits of it, you can see that it’s not something bad.
I personally believe that my personal data of web surfing doesn’t need a high level of privacy. Since this data is mainly used to personalize the internet experience, I find it good that companies can use it to actually target me with personalized content and suggestion that are aligned with my preferences.
Of course, we can’t really control what we give away and what we can keep “secret” and therefore, we can find it disturbing that companies make business by trading a lot of different information about us, without even knowing what they have collected and what they are trading. We can also doubt on the ethics of this and how the companies will be using all these data.
But I can get over this, as the big data is subject to regulations and that therefore, it can’t really hurt the consumer. The benefits of data sharing profiting to me, like better targeting or having access to less popular products (long tail) but also like the other benefits explained in the article, outweigh the cost of that sharing.
Regarding the price discrimination, I also believe that it’s not such a bad thing. Of course, you can think that you may pay a higher price than someone else, but like explained in the article, the product can be declined in various version which can suit the different types of potential user, which is something good for the global welfare.
However I still believe that there’s a lot to improve on this domain, like for example the form of the advertising which is, according to me, too intrusive. Therefore, I cannot conceive to surf on the web without an ad blocker today, even the substance of the advertising could be interesting to me. But that’s another problem which also deserve some attention.
References:
Show less– Q&A EU Data Protection Reform: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6385_en.htm
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My personal opinion is that as much as I do not like the idea of willingly giving multiple large companies more data about myself and my behaviors, so far I believe the benefits to do so greatly outweigh my apprehension. I have found tremendous benefits in using many ad supported services that I do not believe would be possible in their current forms without the increased monetization effects from personally targeted ad revenue (Much greater CPMs). In this way I believe it is important to realize that many of the great tools we use on the internet need to be ad supported, it might as well be through relevant ads to the individual which can only occur through behaviour tracking (browsing history, geolocation etc)
I can say personally that relevant data concerning my online shopping habbits has been useful for me as a consumer. The data that Amazon collects to both target ads “Other customers bought…” as well as placing retargetting ads has added positively to my E-commerce experiences.
With all that being said, it is important that consumers adapt to the new model and understand the trade offs they are implicitly making by signing up for a social networking site or utilzing a service offered by Google – as Scott Goodson at Forbes says “If you’re not paying for it, you become the product” [1], and I truly believe for a lot of people (myself included) this trade off of receiving all these incredible free services in exchange for more of my anonymous data being tracked by a number of very large (for profit) corporations is certainly increasing their overall well-being.
1)http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/03/05/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-you-become-the-product/#67d16e9cb445
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Firstly, I think it’s important to note the framing of the cost structure of privacy that AT&T offers. Instead of paying more to ensure privacy, the consumer actually has the higher privacy price as the default option and then must choose to forgo the privacy function in order to make a saving. The framing of this pricing is paramount and plays on the human beings innate biases. Daniel Kahneman, the nobel prize winning economist talked about these biases and how framing effects impact mans decision making processes. The default option is important as one would have to elect to forgo it, meaning the decision is his/her own. (Kahneman, 2011) This greatly impacts how one would feel if their privacy was indeed invaded and they knew that it was their own fault for not sticking with the default option, rather than paying a premium for the service.
There is an obvious benefit to companies in having access to your private information such as searching habits, duration of stay on sights etc. This “big data” can be used by firms to tailor their advertisements to your own preferences resulting in greater accuracy and increased effectiveness. There is a clear value to this, as companies like AT&T, see having access to your private habits as being worth enough to merit a decrease in monthly subscription of 30%. Whilst some of this mark up is comprised of the monetized value of consumers annoyance of being tracked and wanting to hide their information, it is also certainly made up of the benefit firms, like AT&T derive from having access to your private information.
It could be argued that consumers themselves benefit from having their personal information shared with these companies. The companies can then produce personalized, tailored, targeted advertisements and recommendations for each individual consumer based on their own browsing habits. The benefit of this however, is vastly weighted towards the advertisers and the firms targeting the consumer. These firms are not advertising or recommending to benefit the consumer, they are doing so to exploit the consumer and increase their own profit. Whilst savvy consumers may be able to forgo paying a premium to hide their privacy as they are aware of the advertisements that can be generated as a result of that decision, it is not, I believe in the best interest of all consumers.
Sources:
Show lessDaniel Kahneman , “Thinking Fast and Slow”, October 25, 2011
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Mark Zuckerberg once said « People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people ». This sentence seems increasingly true even if we often try to deny it.
If it is allowed today to provide such a service, it is because of the evolution of peole’s privacy standards and the way they are using internet. Indeed, everyone reveals his private life without restraint regardless of the, yet well-known, risk. There is a contradiction between the need of confidentiality and the desire to share with others.
Everyone is aware of the benefits of sharing private information with providers. The problem lies in the different ways this information may be used. There is no proper control of who and how our personal data is used.
According to me, it would be very interesting to have a feedback on where our information goes, as well as leaving us the choice of to whom we give our information.
Nowadays, we know that the web is a virtual market that is very difficulet to control, and the rules of this market are evolving very slowly. We should take this into account and act knowingly. It’s one thing to enjoy those attractive services full of perks, but in that case, we also have to accept that the providers take some advantages. One solution to avoid an envading use of our private data is to pay attention to what information we place on the internet. Moreover, we can also use services that guarantee our privacy.
To conclude, one must be aware that this business is fruitful because it is full of opportunities for the providers to use our information, sometimes at our disadvantage. For my part, the dangers of personal data being used against my will outweigh the benefits those sites provide us, and therefore i am very careful in the way i share my information on the internet.
Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/20/att-price-on-privacy
Show lesshttp://www.information-age.com/technology/information-management/1206858/should-businesses-put-a-price-on-privacy
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Since this year I’ve begun to earn more and more about Economics of Privacy, SEO, SEA, and all these stuffs you do with your computer without even realising it.
When I think about the number of accounts I used to have on many websites (I can’t remember the number of virtual cats, rabbits, sharks of even humans I had for a while), I just think that at that point, I had no idea where my information were going to. But I remember that I was already annoyed with all the e-mails these sites’ partners send to me as I created an e-mail account especially for these.
When I first started to realise that the advertising that were offered to me had a link with the sites I went to, I first felt a little bit offended, as if I were spied on.
But then I realised that as long as I had to see these ads all around, I’d rather look at the ones that seemed interesting for me.
This still causes me two problems:
– First, when I look for information about something, I tend to open many new pages and tabs and do my research on several days in a row. When I’m almost finished or I just can’t bear with the subject anymore, I just save it all and then close it. When I’m at this point, I’m usually so fed up that I don’t want to see anything about my research, so these ads don’t really come handy.
– Second, these ads show information about the products I bought, not the products I liked. Seeing other products from a brand that I didn’t like sure won’t help.
About the benefits of sharing private information, I think you’re right to specify that if someone had to pay a higher price, then somewhere, someone benefitted from a lower price. But many customers will see the fact of paying a lower price as “good luck” and a higher one, “bad luck”. And as we are human beings, we tend to feel more “horrified” with the injustice of the bad luck of paying something more expensive (that is if you realize it, though) than feeling lucky because we had a deal.
But companies also have to face the fact that more and more customers value their personal information. People don’t want to be fooled anymore, and tend to hide as much as their private life as possible.
One of the event that made people worry about their personal life was the big bug on Facebook on September, 24th 2012 where people were able to see personal messages on their timeline.
In conclusion, I don’t think that the benefits really outweigh the costs of sharing personal information. When you refuse to share it, it’s can be a temporary situation as you still can upload them anytime, but the other way around is not so easy. People are more and more aware that anything that you put on the Internet will be there almost forever.
Sources:
Show lesshttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9563855/Facebook-flooded-with-complaints-after-messages-bug.html
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Despite all the benefits developed above, it is clear that a great proportion of people are still suspicious about that fact of sharing personal information on the web. Indeed, in North America for example, “91% of adults in a survey “agree” or “strongly agree” that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies” or “80% of those who use social networking sites say they are concerned about third parties like advertisers or businesses accessing the data they share on these sites”. However, there are of course people who admit sharing persona data in a commercial way in order to take advantage of best deals that advertisers could propose: “55% of adults “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement: “I am willing to share some information about myself with companies in order to use online services for free””.
Another benefits that consumers may enjoy is the intervention of the state. Obviously, it could also lead to concerns and fears when government can access consumer‘s personal habits and behaviors on the internet. Nevertheless, collecting the same information about consumers just as advertisers or firms do, may allow government to be more efficient in regulating what they are doing with our personal information. Again in the USA, “64% of adults believe the government should do more to regulate advertisers, compared with 34% who think the government should not get more involved”. Indeed, the state could play the role of a watchful regulator who could take care of the global welfare and protect the consumer surplus when needed. This could also lead to price reduction.
As far as I am concerned, I usually pay attention not to give too much information about me or not to register in a lot of shopping websites. This is because one of the only experience that I have had being tracked by advertisers, was a disadvantageous experience. Typically, when I looked for a plane ticket online one day and I compared prices of the same travel ticket the day after it increased the price proposed by the website of the flight company as it knew at that moment that I was interested.
Bibliography:
Show less– http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/12/public-privacy-perceptions/
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These three articles highlight several relevant aspects of the growing issues around privacy. The first article analysed the potentials benefits for consumers from sharing information with online service providers. The second one pointed out some basic notions of the Economics of Privacy and individuals’ attitudes toward privacy. Finally, the third text tackles the theoretical and empirical approaches on how to value private information. In this comment, I will try to discuss these different notions relating to privacy.
1. Benefits from letting online service providers access personal data
Eva-Maria Scholz asked us to think about the benefits we identify from sharing private information with online providers. As a matter of fact, I never thought about the potential benefits maybe because my generation was always mainly warned about the dangers of Internet. However, the article highlighted some benefits individuals enjoy by sharing their personal data. About the behaviour-based price discrimination, I recently was looking for plane tickets through search engines comparing the proposed prices by the different airlines. Later that day, I went back to the same page to see if there were better opportunities than earlier. Surprisingly, all prices had risen even the flight I was interested in (which was in 6 months). Later, someone told me that I should change computer when I want to use this website because they track IP addresses and increase prices when they see that an individual is looking for a particular flight.
I am not sure this theory it is totally genuine but nevertheless, one week later prices decreased again. Therefore, I am not convinced this kind of discrimination might always work if people just need to change computer to remain unspotted. However, this might also be related to the increasing number of requests for this specific flight.
2. Other Benefits
The sign-on systems enable people to use the same account for different websites. In my opinion, such systems are relevant in the case where recommendations systems are taken into account. For instance, on Airbnb most individuals register thanks to their Facebook account, which allows customers to quickly visit the person’s profile (that might be the owner of the apartment you are interested in or one of the last person renting the apartment). Other systems like Doodle also use this kind of device permitting people to answer to polls without logging in.
3. Benefits vs. personal costs
Finally, even after the latest scandals about Facebook and Google selling private information concerning their consumers to the NSA, people continue to use their services. I wonder in fact about why privacy is that much of a hot topic. I understand that we do not want all our pictures and bank accounts to go viral but after Charlie Hebdo’s attack, individuals might also wonder why potential terrorists are not closely watched. It is difficult to find the right balance between surveillance and the right to privacy when it is concerned. Other proponents raised that a third party might be relevant to arbitrate on this issue.
Moreover, I would like to point out that when natural catastrophes like the seism that occurred last Saturday in Nepal, Facebook and Google might be very useful tools to find missing people. Google reactivated the “Person Finder” already implemented during disasters such as Fukushima and Haiti’s earthquake. The company enables to report a missing person and also information related to the individual. Moreover, the service also allows the loved ones to send a text message. Facebook’s “Safety Check” suggests to members logging in in zones where a disaster happened to let people know they are all right. As a result, this businesses benefiting from the sharing of personal information might also serve common good.
http://www.seserv.org/fise-conversation/theeconomicsofprivacydebate
Show lesshttp://www.clubic.com/internet/actualite-764708-seisme-nepal-facebook-google-activent-outils-recherche.html
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I am not a big online buyer and I often mistrust sites that ask for personnel data. In most of the cases, I stop the transaction because I have it in horror to be spied by the marketing department of a company. This is because I have in mind the 50 mails I receive per week with advertisement and other offers that don’t interest me at all.
I would like to get mails with offers that are tailored to my preferences. But the fact is that when I receive such mails, it is often junk mail and it is irritating me: the content is not at all relevant to what I am searching for. What happened? Do the company not remembered my preferences or did I just not decided to share the company my opinion about his products because I mistrusted the site? In fact, I am puzzled by the effectiveness of the use of personal data.
In a document written by Alessandro Acquisti, the author exposes a wide range of benefits for “data subjects” to share their personal information. It can result in immediate benefits and intangible result. We talk about discounts and others personalised and customised information. But I think that in most of the cases, data is often not well used. In my opinion there is a real benefit when the discrimination is optimal and efficient. When people are contacted by companies that are able to offer exactly what people are looking for, the user’s utility is supposed to increase. But in most of the cases the data of the consumers is not well analysed and many consumers are put into the same bag, while they don’t have the same preferences: they aggregate data. And it should be even more difficult for the companies to analyse well the preferences of customers when they don’t share complete data or when the data is not valid. When Acquisti enumerates the costs of not sharing data, he mentions the opportunity lost when a user make the choice of not sharing his data.
In my opinion, the customer’s data has to be really well analysed in order to take marketing actions that can be beneficial for the customers. The fact is that in most of the cases, companies don’t have the financial and time resources in order to use this data efficiently, which can be understandable. I think that if consumers were optimally targeted by the companies and if they had the true feeling that sharing their personal data, they certainly will be less reluctant to share their personal data. By this, I mean that customer’s satisfaction would increase if their personal data was well used by companies in order to target them better.
Could we assume that if the satisfaction of customers increases by the sharing of their personal information, they would be more likely to share this information? Could it be possible to have a virtuous circle: when customers share more information, companies are able to target better those customers and the satisfactions of those customers increase and the benefit of companies rises too because they are able to target better their customers.
In my opinion, when customers are well discriminated, the benefits overweight the costs.
Sources:
Show less– Acquisti, A., The Economics of Personal Data and the Economics of Privacy, 30 Years after the OECD Privacy Guidelines
– From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases, A Winterberry Group White Paper January 2012
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First of all, I agree that firms make behaviour-based price discrimination. Some people claim that it is not fair, that it is not equal. But there are lot of examples which make some price discrimination.
Moreover, concerning more precisely the tracking of the so-called private information, I also agree with enterprises doing this. For example, there exist some sites which would be costly if they didn’t earn money with brokering of information. Not only we have all advantages quoted above in the text, but we also have free access very useful to sites which could be costly without this information tracking. All those benefits obviously outweigh the costs of sharing personnal data. Anybody does really inspect you. Indeed, your data are just calculated by a program where your name is anonymous.
According to my opinion, you authorize firms to track your browse history since you decided going on internet. Even if it was forbidden, they would do it without you even knowing about it.
Nevertheless, I hope it will not go further.
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Concerning the topic on data sharing, we can say that it is one of the major issue today on online privacy. Indeed, studies has shown that “more data cross the internet every second than were stored in the entire internet just 20 years ago” (1). The “big data”, as they called it, permits to treat these information and has revolutionized the business models of companies operating in the 21st Century. They can now accomplish a feat which was impossible 30 years ago: they know who we are, what we like, what we don’t like, what we may like etc.
Take Facebook as an example which is “the Eldorado” for data gathering-firms. We share our personal information (such as age, occupation, films, books, music etc.) there under the false assumptions that the privacy is relatively effective, that only our friends will be able to see them. But evidences have been found that many applications on Facebook have been transmitting information to dozen of advertising and data-analyzing companies (2).
Even when we download applications (such as angry bird an innocent game in appearance) on our smartphones of tablets, other companies can collect our data in one way or other without our knowledge (3).
Today, we share our personnel information more readily than ever online. Just a quick example: I am looking for a student job during the summer and in order to do that, I had to subscribe online to employment agency such as monster, stepstone, Randstad, tempo-team etc. In total, I just shared my personal information (mail, phone number, address, birthdate etc.) to ten different websites without batting an eyelash. Of course, they all had a privacy clause but we are never immune to a hacking such as SNCB which, just three years ago, revealed personal data of more than one millions of their users on their website. (4)
Despite all these facts, I personally think that I benefit from it. Indeed, the advertisements displayed on Facebook are those who interests me and I receive mail about concerts of bands which I am a big fan of. Some were even more appealing because they offered a discount to a product which I already had the intention to buy so I consider this as a win-win situation. I even discovered new books via Goodreads and new clothes brands (Brandy Melville, urban outfitters) thanks to that. Though, I admit that it may benefits more large-scale consumers easily suggestible such as me. In my opinion, even without data sharing, we would be spammed by advertisements. Better be the one who may hold our attention. Also, for those who are outraged to have personal information divulged by social media or the applications which they downloaded, these are part of their revenue stream, thus part of the reasons why they are for free. I prefer this case than to pay a fee for Facebook, Spotify or YouTube.
To conclude, although the benefits vs costs of sharing personal information depends from one to another, in my point of view, the benefits clearly outweighs the costs.
(1) A., McAfee & E., Brynkoflsson. (2012) Big Data: the management Revolution. Online on http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232279314_Big_data_the_management_revolution.
Show less(2) The Wall Street Journal. (2010). Facebook in Privacy Breach. Online on http://terriau.org/blog/postings/20101018%20Facebook%20in%20Online%20Privacy%20Breach%3B%20Applications%20Transmitting%20Identifying%20Information%20-%20WSJ.pdf.
(3) M., Kumar. (2014). Researchers explained How ANGRY BIRDS Sharing Your Personal Data. Online on http://thehackernews.com/2014/04/researchers-explained-how-angry-birds.htmlC.
(4) M., Charlier. (2012). La SNCB divulgue les coordonnées privées de ses clients sur internet. Published on Le Soir. Online on http://www.lesoir.be/143379/article/actualite/belgique/2012-12-24/sncb-divulgue-coordonn%C3%A9es-priv%C3%A9es-ses-clients-sur-internet.
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I think that the usage of personal information by companies is still in its infancy for many reasons. If we look back in history, we could take the example of the postcard who was rejected by the Kaiser in Germany because of privacy concerns. The use of postcards is now really spread and implemented in the everyday life, but why ? Because people have understood that the benefits are outweighing the disadvantages. Moreover, people understood that they have a perfect control of the information they expose publicly. Indeed, people choose what they are writing on their postcards.
The same principle can be applied in the use of online data by companies. I think that the problem is that people do not understand which information is using and the way it is used. Indeed, if people does not know the danger of the system, they cannot be comfortable with it. That is precisely what it is happening nowadays.
Researches have shown that the awareness of use of online data by companies or even by government is high but, as I’ve mentioned before, the level of understanding of what it practically means is quite lower. It also highlights that people think that there is no alternative to sharing information that this trend will be even higher in the following years. What is encouraging for managers is that young people have nowadays a different vision of privacy and are not afraid to share information online.
Solutions are possible to counterfeit the fact that people do not understand the system. The best solution for managers would be the proactivity of the consumers in researching information on the issue, but that solution has only limited potential. Managers have to communicate on the issue in order to obtain a win-win solution. Companies will have more information and people will understand that sharing information can be translated into benefits.
As far as I’m concerned, I think that many companies are using my online information. The cause is really simple: Except food, I buy almost everything on Internet. Every social network is using our information in order to make advertising relevant in our point of view. It can be really simple like YouTube offering videos similar to what we have already watched previously. But it can lead to more complex process like target advertising. Earlier this week, I was searching a specific product on the Amazon website and I see now related advertising everyday on Facebook.
Sources:
Show lesshttp://danblank.com/blog/2007/12/01/the-benefits-of-sharing-personal-information-online/
http://www.sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/assets/Uploads/SocialIntelligenceBigData.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2014/jan/27/nhs-data-sharing-benefits-risks
http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/Online%20personal%20data%20final%20240511.pdf
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At first, let me say that this article has been really interesting as it has made several links with topics addressed earlier in the semester. My personal situation makes me unwilling to provide online any personal information. As my father works for the Anti-Fraud European Office, he always told me that sharing personal information and letting anyone to have access to it can cause unpleasant situations. I will not develop this point too much as I only want to underline my non-objective situation.
Commonly, studies showed that customers in countries such as Germany are less willing to share their personal data than customers in USA for example (Infosys). In Europe, customers don’t feel the real necessity and positive effect of sharing personal data. People are often scared that it won’t be used only for commercial purposes but also for steeling identities for example. Of course, this is an extreme situation but it may happen to everybody.
Concerning the balance between the benefits and the costs of sharing personal information, I think it is a difficult exercise to concretely estimate the weight of each side of the balance. Each person will give a higher weight to either the benefits or the costs. The costs will get a higher weight if the person has a bad experience. For example, as we’ve seen with the concept of remarketing, companies usually analyse customer’s behaviour each time they visit a website. As a consequence, if I often visit a website which allows me to buy online, I will see, in other websites, many ads concerning the first one. This will usually bring me to visit again this website and buy more stuff. If the person tends to buy a lot online, it can create certain dependence, like drugs’ effects. Dependence leads many times to depression or, in our case, money problems. In our example, a customer who has experienced a similar situation gives a higher weight to the costs of sharing personal information.
References:
Show lessInfosys: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-06-25/privacy-paradox-americans-happy-to-share-personal-data-with-big-business
Data saves lives: http://www.datasaveslives.eu/news-resources/finding-a-balance-how-europe-can-protect-the-privacy-of-citizens-and-benefit-from-data-sharing/
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What do you think?
I consider that data sharing nowadays has become inevitable. Alongside the evolution of the internet presence in our day-to-day life, our modern society has evolved. Our society shifted from a business model where products and services are sold throughout the consumers without any discrimination into a business model where one of the most important part of the firm’s decisions is to be able to target the right consumers at the right time at the right place.
With this being said, it does not mean that I totally agree with the data sharing in its current state. It is still strange when you realize that they are some firms that manage to make some quite important profits thanks to your personal information. Can we really say that those profits are deserved? Coming from a household where ‘manual’ work has always been put forward as the best way to succeed in life, I find it difficult to agree with the fact I just mentioned above.
However, I have to admit that I do agree with the benefits of data sharing that have been presented in this article. And with over-connected society, data sharing has become necessary in order for our society to function correctly.
Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
Initially, I did not have the impression that I hugely benefited from data sharing. I was aware that there must be a lot of underlining impacts of data sharing which influence positively our day-to-day life. Unfortunately I did not see those positive effects and so I was not aware of them. Indeed I did not experience a real reduction of price and since I greatly dislike advertising in general, having targeted advertising did not please me more than other advertising. Yet I still managed to understand that targeted advertising allowed me to get some useful information about products or services which I really appreciated sometimes.
But after reading this article and some other sources, I managed to understand some advantages I did not linked with data sharing before. For example, one advantage of data sharing I did not noticed until this article is the ‘Single sign-on systems’. I frequently use this system and it is a real time saving system. Also the recommendation systems are a real benefit in a day-to-day life.
Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
Another benefit I experienced is that my search costs are being reduced thanks to data sharing. Indeed due to the targeted advertising and the recommendation systems, as a customer you are presented with supplementary products that really suit you. And this is done without any extra search costs since it is the firm that presents you those products on a silver plate. Moreover, like I said above, I consider that data sharing allows the firm to propose the right product to the right customer at the right time without any extra costs towards the customers.
Data sharing is also important in other domains than the one mentioned here. One of those domains is the scientific one. In this domain, data sharing allow a rapid and better progress. Indeed data sharing reinforce an open scientific inquiry; promote new research through existing data, etc. The scientific domain is not the only domain that gains from this sharing.
And do those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information?
This question depends on each person I suppose. Some persons put a lot of value on the secrecy of their personal information and then others do not really care about who knows what about them. When the privacy of your information is very important for you, you will probably weight the inconvenience higher than the benefits of data sharing.
However for the future, it is important that data sharing systems are regulated. There should be a limit to who can obtain which information and especially how they obtain it. Otherwise there is the risk to evolve into a ‘big brother’ society where everyone is spied on all the time. It is by regulation that we will be able to decrease this risk. One solution is to increase the transparency in those data sharing systems. As a customer, you only see the tip of the iceberg. More transparency about the costs and the advantages of data sharing would allow the customers to take the right decisions about their personal information and where they want to share those information.
As conclusion, I personally think that it is only when a balance is found between having certain data protected and other data getting shared, analysed and used that we will be in a win-win situation for both data holders and data subjects. I do realize that this is a complex trade-off and there is properly no ‘optimum’ number of data sharing. Yet it is still important to reflect on the matter. It is only by this means that the costs of data sharing can be compensated by the benefits. Otherwise, we will never been in a society where the maximum utility can be reached.
Sources:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2033&page=9
Show lessA, Acquisti. (2010). The economics and behavioral economics of privacy.
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In my personal day-to-day life I benefit form most of the advantages mentioned in the article: I save time with single sign-on systems, most of the time I do not disagree with the ads I receive on youtube or similar and one single good recommendation can make up for the three or four that I didn’t care about. Although I don’t find a big difference in terms of benefits between giving access or not to my personal data, I have to mention that in some occasions I have found great advantages from data sharing; maybe the best example is when I am on vacation and thanks to your geographical location, preferences and budget you receive information about products/services you would be interested into acquire in the short term. What is important to notice is that this happens (mostly) when there is a greater disclose of more specific information. This works for me only until some basic point; I don’t like companies and advertisers knowing every single detail about me and my preferences even if it means more accurate recommendations. I don’t like neither the future vision of having everywhere super accurate and personalized ads or recommendations much like in the Minority Report style, so I like webpages to inform me about advertisers’ attempts to profile me and to have the choice of opting out.
Show lessFor the time being I find the benefits of sharing my info greater than the costs (positive payoff between the sacrifice of some personal space for the convenience or connection). I think we are still in times where information collected by advertising networks is so fragmented and so laden with errors that sometimes it is useless or even self-defeating (as found in some of the examples of other comments); proof of it is how no one has been able to make a big business out of personal information (even assuming you master the art of what to do with the right information) it is still quite difficult and expensive to link online and offline information. As already commented, one extra benefit of sharing information is the positive use that Governments and intelligence or security agencies can give to it. As a final line, I want to say that I am pretty aware of the facility with which you can change the value you give to personal information especially when considering than text messages, online chats, emails and other supposedly private information can be retrievable by lawyers, employers and others.
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About behaviour-based price discrimination, I think that it is normal that the firms profit of the situation, who would not do it? It is now the role of consumers to pay more attention to the price of goods. There exists search engine, comparison-shopping sites: a lot of means to find the best price of the product that we want to buy. As Mr Belleflamme mentions to his course, it can have bias: the search engine can favour certain sites, not be perfectly objective. Consumers are aware of these matters: it now our turn to be vigilant. I think that in few years, there will be a revolution: consumers will not agree anymore with the actual system of privacy. They will become aware that personal data are valuable and will want to sell it. For example, Google will maybe have to pay people to use its applications in order to collect personal data.
As examples mention in the post show, it can be advantageous for consumers to have targeted advertising. If the ads are not too intrusive, why do not have personal selection of them? It allows us to not waste time to make further research as the target advertising has already do it for us. It will maybe be better if consumer have the choice: share personal information in order to have target advertising or not. I think that a lot of people will agree because, despite the drawbacks, it can be very useful.
I have a subscription to Netflix and I often see recommended movies. Most of time, I like the selection made. I discover new movies thanks to the recommendation system. I do not see any disadvantage of this practise.
Until today, I find more advantages than disadvantages of the sharing of personal information. It generally helps me in my researches. However, I stay vigilant to information that I put on online site. For example, I do not mention where I live on Facebook or my phone number. It can be dangerous.
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Private information belonging to a private individual, but the individual commonly may share with others for personal or business reasons. It may be considered a breach of privacy to disclose such information, but for most people its disclosure is not considered a serious matter.
According to the article, there are some benefits of sharing private information. 1. Behavior-based price discrimination. The developments in information technologies allow companies to keep track of their customers’ search and purchasing behavior and, based on this information, to develop detailed consumption profiles. Among other things, this availability of more and, in particular, better customer information makes the use of sophisticated price discrimination techniques possible. 2. Targeted advertising. The ability to monitor and analyze a consumer’s surfing habits makes the use of targeted advertising techniques feasible. 3. Recommendation systems. Companies analyze their customers’ past search or purchasing habits in order to be able to suggest items that a particular consumer is likely to enjoy.
I was very surprised to read that according to AT&T, the Texas-based telecommunications provider, customers between are willing to pay $29 and $62 a month in order to prevent your Internet provider from tracking and analyzing your browsing history. Despite all the benefits of sharing private information from the companies’ side, there are many reasons why customers are willing to pay so much money to prevent the companies to do so. For example, a person trying to avoid a stalker will be inclined to further restrict access to such personal information.Furthermore, a person’s SSN or SIN, credit card numbers, and other financial information may be considered private if their disclosure might lead to crimes such as identity theft or fraud. Some types of private information, including records of a person’s health care, education, and employment may be protected by privacy laws. Unauthorized disclosure of private information can make the perpetrator liable for civil remedies and may in some cases be subject to criminal penalties.
Another problem is that employees may not be aware of how their actions online may compromise company security. Educate employees as to how a simple click on a received link or a downloaded application can result in a virus infecting their computer and the network. Advise them not to click on suspicious links and to pay careful attention when providing personal information online.
As I mentioned, there are many benefits of sharing information online: Facilitates open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery; Allows employees to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links; Provides an opportunity to widen business contacts; Targets a wide audience, making it a useful and effective recruitment tool; Improves business reputation and client base with minimal use of advertising; Expands market research, implements marketing campaigns, delivers communications and directs interested people to specific web sites. But the company should be careful of sharing all the private information, since it can lead to frauds and crimes.
Source:
Show lesshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_sensitivity
http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/socialnetworkingsitespolicy.aspx
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I think that a good choice in the repartition of disclosed and protected data is the better solution. I have experienced Google+. When I had to change my computer, I was already annoyed before starting to fill in all of my usernames and passwords. But with Google+ I had only to log in Google+. My Youtube did not have change and was automatically reusable. It was the same with a lot of websites. Then the earning of time was a right compensation of disclosing my personal data. I also tried Netflix. It is a real advantage to have propositions for the following movie. It is not a problem to give information like my movie tastes because I take more advantages of this than disadvantages.
All of this seems magical but the personal data must not override the simple personal information, my musical tastes, my preferred gender of movie and so on. For example, medical informations must stay protected.
One benefit of sharing personal information with firms is that you may receive an immediate monetary compensation for revealing your personal data or you may receive intangible benefits (Acquisti, 2010).
There is supplementary advantages for the targeted ads. They implies that the percentage of junk mail will be smaller than the case without targeted ads. According to the Omega Management Group Corp., seventy percent of respondents of a study states that they like ads tailored to their interests. The targeted ads may also be less intrusive (Acquisti, 2010). Note that targeted advertising is by no means limited to the Internet as Professor Paul Belleflamme said in an other article ‘What do you think of targeted advertising?’ on this website.
Prices might be reduced as an effect of a more efficient advertising and marketing. (Acquisti, 2010) It is also because targeted ads increase the return on investment of the firm (ROI) (3) and the fact that the competition increased (Belleflamme, April 2013).
According to me and my small aversion of sharing personal data, those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information. But more people are afraid of the flows of personal data on the internet. In the USA, more than 90 percent of Americans feel they’ve lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies. (5) The importance of this outweighing depends on the willingness to accept to share personal information. Then we cannot give an unique answer of this outweighing. But this uncertainty is often because of a lack of information about the benefits and the disadvantages of sharing personal data.
References:
1. Acquisti, A. (2010). The Economics of Personal Data and the Economics of Privacy. OECD
Show less2. http://www.omegascoreboard.com/news/customer-experience-roi/customers-see-benefits-in-targeted-ads/
3. http://www.ereachconsulting.com/benefits-of-targeting-advertisements/
4. https://www.ipdigit.eu/2013/04/what-to-think-of-targeted-advertising/
5. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2846855/control-over-personal-info-nearly-dead-pew-survey-respondents-say.html
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In my oppinion, if these benefits outweight the costs depend of two factors.On the one hand, the personal value that each individual gives to his personal and private information. On the other hand, the way of each individual benefits of the gains of the use and analisys of his information. If there is a benefit or a loss depends of each person.
Once you go online and create your first account, either an email adress orsocial networking, the disclosure of information is immediate. You reveal without thinking your name, date of birth, nationality … In Facebook or Twitter you open a window into your private life, your preferences and interests. The problem arises when you realize that this information that you have shared can be used by institutions, public and private, for purposes to which you have not given permission. In my opinion, here lies the crux of the matter: we have not accepted, at least not consciously the use our private data by others and not perceive any benefit from it. This is seen as a violation of our privacy. 78% of respondents to a survey think that service providers hold too much information about consumer preferences and behaviour and 73% would prefer to give specific approval before the collection of data.
However, there are ways to get tangible benefits disclosing information. There are several websites that promise you that if you answer a survey, giving your opinion about products and other websites, you will get prizes or even money. Furthermore, it is common practice in some companies offer coupons or discounts to customers in exchange for revealing personal data, but I’ve never been in that situation.
However, I have benefited from the targeted advertising. If advertising is not targeted to the right audience, it has no effect on the consumer and will be ignored and it will only be annoying. However if the ads that are displayed on the web pages you visit are selected according to your tastes and preferences are more likely to both you and the companies obtain benefits. On many occasions I have seen ads regarding content or products that had sought before, then I ended up buying these products.
The term Big Data refers to describe the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data produced from various types of sources, that could be climate information, satellite imagery or GPS signals. Also may involve personal data, information relating to an individual and can be anything from a name, a photo, an email adress, medical information or a computer IP adress. The main benefits are higher productivity and improved services, which aret he source of economic growth. If the top 100 EU manufacturers used Big Data, the savings worthed € 425 billion, and by 2020, Big Data analytics could boost EU economic growth by an additional 1,9% or, what it is the same, a GDP increase of € 206 billion.
In my oppinion, if these benefits outweight the costs depend of two factors.On the one hand, the personal value that each individual gives to his personal and private information. On the other hand, the way of each individual benefits of the gains of the use and analisys of his information. If there is a benefit or a loss depends of each person.
Source:
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/data-protection-big-data_factsheet_web_en.pdf
Show lessVery interesting.
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I don’t have a problem with my surfing habits being monitored. As explained in this article, sharing personal information tends to improve our surfing experience.
For example, advertising is kind of inevitable if we want to keep enjoying websites and social media platforms for free. So why not enjoy the targeted advertising that might show us other offers, perhaps more interesting, than those we’ve already actively searched for?
I think consumers won’t see an issue with sharing their personal information, as long as it benefits them and if it doesn’t feel as intrusive. Finding out your daughter is pregnant, when she starts receiving coupons for baby clothes and cribs through the mail, feels a little bit more intrusive (Forbes). More on intrusive advertising, according to a survey by fastcompany.com, most customers don’t like location-based offers. Only 27% of surveyed customers were happy to receive offers on smartphones when they are near a certain retailer. Consumers show a clear aversion to their locations being tracked, as mentioned in the article. On the other hand, and I thought it would be interesting to mention as well, some banks like ING, are using information about their customers’ physical localisation in order to improve their service. For example, if a customer is on holiday abroad and the bank observes that the client’s bank account is running low, the bank might send a text to the client, asking if he would like the bank to transfer some money from his saving account etc. Not all customers agree to receive such messages from their bank, but those who do are very grateful to the bank when they get in such stressful situations. I guess in those cases, people don’t mind the intrusion, because they trust their bank.
What doesn’t benefit the consumer is for example the fact that Facebook “has a license to use your content in any way it sees fit”, as mentioned by Oliver Smith in an article for the Telegraph. This license applies to all photos and videos uploaded on Facebook. In that case, Facebook is simply making profit on the back of its users.
I believe that sharing personal information on the internet and this information being sold and used for different purposes, is a quite new concept. As a result, national and international policies still need to be set in place and this is a process that takes some time. Perhaps our perceptions of privacy are changing. By doing the research for this paper I observed that a lot of progress is being made in terms of targeted advertising or recommendation systems etc. Companies are starting to know which kind of targeted advertising is preferred over others. Also, companies now realise that trust is important and that it is often a factor that can determine whether an ad will feel as intrusive or not.
Finally, I’d say that sharing personal information benefits our consumer experience, but it is important that the consumer remains empowered and able to protest against what they experience as an invasion of their privacy.
Our perception of privacy might be changing and this is according to me the question raised by this article. What do we think is acceptable? Where is the boundary between improving customer experience and invasion of privacy?
We are living in a period of many changes and it is important to have such debates on privacy, so that policies can be set in place to protect our rights as consumers and citizens.
– http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
Show less– http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/9780565/Facebook-terms-and-conditions-why-you-dont-own-your-online-life.html
– http://www.fastcompany.com/3002033/drawing-line-between-clever-and-creepy-customer-data
– Intervention during Advanced Marketing course, by Mr. Philippe Wallez from ING
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I peronnaly have no problem with the fact that my online informations are shared and exploited. Indeed, giving access to my personnal information can only be positive for me. Oriented advertising, price discrimination, recommandation system can only be beneficial for me. Nevertheless, I would like to insist that using personnal information is not new and not necessarily connected to internet. I will pick one “real-life” example offering two benefits of sharing information presented in this article. Since years, Colruyt offers the possibility to the clients to have a Colruyt credit card. You can use this card to pay for your shopping, and Colruyt makes the list of all your purchases. Every month, the clients receive a promotional magazine giving them access to some personnal discount on articles they commonly buy. So, here, price discrimination and targeted advertising are benefic for the customers. I personnaly use this kind of service and I hardly think both companies and consumers benefits from it on the internet.
First, I rarely purchase products on internet, but I am aware of all the benefits when you intend to buy some products or services and thus enjoy the lower prices due to the price discrimination or are offered similar or connected products with the targeted advertising. Booking holidays is the only service I “pay” on internet, and it is clearly more easy to compare prices and characteristics of accomodations or flights when my internet provider share my information. I also don’t waste too much time searching for information because they are offered to me while I am surfing.
Secondly, I use YouTube a lot, recommandations improve my online experience because it allows me to discover new content or to find back videos I watched recently and thus reduce my search cost.
Like I exposed in my answers to the previous questions, reducing the searching costs is an obvious benefit for the consumer. Shopping on the internet become thus, quick and adapted to the consumers offering them products they will enjoy at a price they are ready to purchase avoiding them to visit several websites to find what they trully want. Besides the consumers benefits, sellers also benefit from these information sharing. They know the preferences of their consumers but they can use this tool to follow the evolution of their need and thus can adapt their product to fit with this evolution.
I personnaly can not say that cost may out weight the benefits after my answers I gave to the previous questions. However, I can understand that for consumers that are reluctant to let their internet provider use their information, cost out weight the benefits. Indeed, they have the perception that internet is pushing them to buy some articles when they see targeted advertising and are certain they will always be offered the most expensive products. In this case, they will lost a lot of time searching for what they may call, “real information” looking for cheapest products than those which are automatically presented to them.
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1. What do you think?
First of all I think we are a little late by asking ourselves if we are oké with the fact that companies, the government and other institutions have access to some private information about us. Although thanks to the Internet, these privacy concerns become more visible and people start to question this more. However I have the feeling that people are forgetting that before the Internet became so prominent in our lives we also shared some private info about ourselves. For example every time you use your loyalty card at the supermarket you give some private information away about your shopping behavior and your preferences. I have the feeling that people do not make a big deal out of this but when we think about companies using our search queries on the Internet to find out our preferences we find this worrying, which in my opinion is not logical at all.
2. Do you benefit from letting online service providers accessing your personal data?
As the text already mentioned, in some extent we are benefiting from this as a customer. This in terms of lower prices, increased price pressure on the online service providers, helps with processing an overwhelming supply or options to choose from.
These for me are all benefits from letting online service providers access my personal data. Another benefit that I think of is for instance when you use YouTube. When you are logged on with your email account, the next time you visit the website Google will propose some video’s to you in line with what you where looking at before. This is in my opinion rather useful for consumers because you do not need to remember the search query you used before to find a particular video. In other words it reduces search costs and it makes the overall experience nicer.
3. Are there maybe other benefits than the ones I mentioned in the post?
Targeted advertising can be really convenient for consumers when the ads are in line with the customers their preferences and taste. Another benefit that is linked to this is that search costs and time of consumers can be decreased dramatically when firms use targeted advertising. This because if a customer is looking for some sport shoes on Zalando for example, the next time the he/she visits YouTube for example a pair of sport shoes will pop up and the add changes constantly. This is rather convenient because you do not have to browse the Internet to find some sport shoes thanks to targeted advertising.
4. Do those benefits out weight the costs of sharing personal information?
If the benefits out weight the costs or not will depend from customer to customer I think. Customers that are really fond of their privacy will probably do not think that the benefits out weight the costs. Customers that do not have many problems with giving their private information will be more open to it and will more easily see the advantages of it. However in my opinion there are more benefits to sharing personal information than costs. Especially behavioral based pricings has a lot of advantages for consumers and are undervalued by them. If consumers are more aware of the benefits it provides for them I think it would be much easier to convince them that sharing personal information is a good thing. There are more posts about the concerns than about potential benefits of sharing information on the Internet. In my opinion we should change that.
References:
Peacock, S. (2014, July). How web tracking changes user agency in the age of Big Data: the used user. Big Data & Society .
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As seen in the e-marketing course, especially during a conference given by the company “Proxistore”, the “remarketing” is a practice widely used by companies. It consists in analyzing the behavior of a person on a website. For example, a person will visit “Zalando” and click repeatedly on different links (for example, shoes, accessories, etc.) but in the end, this person won’t buy anything. It is at this point that the “remarketing” comes in. The goal is to serve ads, here with our example, Zalando, to encourage that person to return to the site and end up making a purchase . In my view, this practice has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that advertising is targeted, allowing us not to be too bothered by it because it interests us a minimum. However, this pushes us to buy and sometimes it bothers me, because if you decided not to pursue this purchase, it was probably for a good reason and it is useless to reconsider our decision.
Targeted advertising therefore has advantages. As mentioned in the text, users often save time for example when they are looking at a film list, it becomes smaller or it helps them more easily to find what they are looking through their previous research. However, I find that it can be scary sometimes. This can give the impression of being spied on all the time and can lead to less use of the internet and a decrease in data sharing.
Data sharing brings benefits such as saving time and targeted content but can also be seen with suspicion because users often don’t feel they control the shared information. If we take the case of sign-on systems, the act of going through another platform to share our information, we certainly save time, but it deprives us of control we can have about the information we want to share.
Many data now circulate everywhere thanks to this sharing, but I think that users don’t always realize what they give as information and are sometimes victims of the system.
I have personally benefited from sharing my information even though I wasn’t fully aware of it. During my exchange in Canada, we used to book our hotels for our travels on “Booking.com” and as I was making reservations I received many benefits, such as discounts on the next reservations or other benefits related to activities near the hotel.
Two enormous benefits of sharing personal information concerns the sharing with authorities such as the government and banks. First of all regarding the government, people like to know that the government has information to track down out-of-the-law people, such as criminals, terrorists etc. Another advantage is the sharing of information with the banks because in that way they can best protect their clients from potential hackers.
In the text, we talk mainly about benefits concerning users, but there are also many advantages for firms. As mentioned in the article “The economics of Personal data and the economics of privacy,” Acquisti (2010), firms may have a lot of information on their potential customers and assess trends that would interest them and avoid having too much products in stock or unsold products. Firms can also improve their offer and their services by analyzing the behavior of their consumers. Another argument concerns once again the targeted advertisements. Companies pay a relatively high price for their advertising to appear on various sites and reach potential consumers, the fact of benefit from this targeted advertising allows them to reach only people likely to be interested in their products and thus don’t waste money on advertising that won’t help.
In conclusion, I would say that the main disadvantage is the lack of control from the users. But in most cases the benefits outweigh the cost of sharing personal information because in most of the cases, it is a win-win situation between firms and consumers.
Sources:
Acquisti (2010). The economics of Personal data and the economics of privacy
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-06-25/privacy-paradox-americans-happy-to-share-personal-data-with-big-business
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