Do we need to pay to protect our privacy on the Internet ?

"In the business of publication, readers are products and consumers are the advertisers," said Dave Winer, paraphrasing a famous quote: "If you do not see the product means, you are the product" .

The bubble data

Path, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Foodspotting, Yelp, Gowalla and many others retrieve the phone numbers of our contacts and their email addresses on their servers to facilitate the pairing, often without asking permission or inform users. For Uwe Hook , president of the consulting firm BatesHook, this indicates a major problem.

"The crash of 2000 had nothing to do with technology" he recalls. "He cons for everything to do with the business model used to pay for it. Traceability advertising promised more effective than offline advertising. The bubble has overvalued the business until it collapses. "
 

"Are we not back into a bubble around the valuation of personal user data?" Asks Uwe Hook. Today, conjunctions are made on the revenue generated (or will ever be generated) by personalized advertising based on user data. Facebook has a business model, but its value is based on the future realization. Twitter still has no business model, but it's already billions of dollars.

"But most often, many companies do not know what to do with this data." If we are to believe the promises of Big Data , user data, theoretically, will send personalized advertising. "If you buy dog food, you will receive more publicity for products for dogs. You will be collected in a segment with other consumers, known as "buyer of dog food", and a data model will be developed for it. "But is not this a simplistic view of how life is?
 

"The problem is not to use data to make decisions, the problem lies in its unique approach and simplistic that the data would only serve to make decisions. The other problem with this statement is the belief that we are only rational consumers. Targeted advertising is based on the idea that your observable behavior presents a coherent and realistic picture of your wants and needs. But this is not the case. "

This customization is not she a simplistic model that may not bring as much as we expected? Businessmen do not they believe rather naively in our rationality, thinking that our decisions are based solely on data? Are we only rational beings devoid of emotion in our consumer choices?

My buying behavior in 2010 there lots of links with my buying behavior in the future? "The economy is changing, the context changes, tastes change, opportunities also. Above all, we are social beings, not rational abstractions. We are more often guided by our emotions when we click than anything that would be found in our reason. Targeting walking on a limited scale. "But the dream that user data will be used tomorrow all the publicity seems nothing but a dream to Uwe Hook. "I'm not trying to minimize the opportunities existing in the data interaction and human behavior, as shown by the instructive article in the New York Times on "How firms learn your secrets," I do not think this way of collecting data will bring us to the golden calf. Tulips have value. houses have value. Data Value . But it is not so high that people consider it as the bubble extends data. It is highly questionable that even a small partner in this development can be achieved. "

Funders are spending millions of dollars to invest in companies whose business model is based on data users. This is the new gold rush proclaims the famous investor Peter Thiel . Anyone can be the next Mark Zuckerberg. "They create companies that need our personal data to succeed, just like the bankers mortgage needs undesirable to create fictitious AAA ratings. One day, when the reality is coming back to its fundamentals, the bubble will explode. Much money will be lost. Many people will be injured. "

From the ashes, new companies will emerge that will have realistic expectations about the value of user data. And who knows, maybe that will give us control of the data. It has value, as articulated Doc Searls , the promoter of the VRM (Vendor Relationship Management, that is to say commercial relationship management, see "Mastering his private life" ) to establish a relationship voluntary between customer and merchant. Doc Searls, moreover, explains very well that the issue is not so simple. "We do not know if traders are willing to pay people for their personal data. Without this information, we do not say what the perceived value that people could have their personal data. Especially because n 'There has never been a market where people sell their personal data. What we know is that personal data has a use value. The idea that they can also have a sale value is a new idea it must be proved. " What are other people who sell our data, as demonstrated last week by selling our Twitter tweets at two companies specializing in data mining - which is not without raising other numerous problems rights, brilliantly recalls Lionel Maurel . But also remember that the belief in customization is certainly a mistake. Still, the problem is over? At what amount the user can sell this data? For what purpose? Doc Searls also denounced since 2010 the risk of a bubble data .

"Maybe after the bursting of this bubble will we again discuss calmly and build realistic business models that will perhaps finally in control of their data users", says Uwe Hook. Maybe ...

Is it time to pay for his private life?

The director of the Enterprise Privacy Group , Toby Stevens is the question to the Data Trust Blog. The recent change in the conditions of use of Google has certainly been one of the biggest changes in the management of his private life. "But at we took the measure of legal and commercial implications of this change? What Google had in mind, they know where they are going. So what does this mean for us? "

As highlighted Robin Wilton , research director at Gartner, one of our main problems is that Google appears to have deliberately confused "privacy policy" and "privacy policy": they not only changed the way they inform users, but also how they manage personal information. In fact, this simplification of Google's policy, required by regulators, they can now use personal information collected in all the services that everyone uses. "Their new policy allows them to exploit the data across all services a user to streamline services, personalize the experience and facilitate the sharing and collaboration. change allows Google to use now both mines navigation, networking, messaging, documents, the shopping ... In short, just about any aspects of our experiences online, in order to better serve customers by advertising. "
But he is not making a diatribe against Google, defends Toby Stevens. Facebook continues to attract criticism regarding its privacy policy changing. Google's Android platforms Apple iOS or have been severely criticized because of trivial applications accessed without reason to photos of their users or their address books.

In a more fragmented market, such as trade or bank, if a company does something that upsets customers, they have the opportunity to end their relationship and go find other suppliers. If enough customers do, then the company eventually change its practices. But Google and Facebook have become so dominant that it is impossible to avoid. Users who choose to avoid Google are marginalized and forced to use disjointed services from a range of suppliers. Those who choose to leave Facebook (or any social network) are neglected networks with other benefits. "Withdrawal is not an option for many."

"Our problem is not Google or Facebook, or legislation on privacy, or market regulation, or lack of user-centered approaches in the implementations of these systems. Our problem is the business model under underlying that we expect to receive these services for free. These companies provide a wealth of interactions previously unimaginable without asking a penny for this experiment. course, to create this wealth of interaction, they need a significant amount of data. But the root cause of our lack of control over the operation of our data is that we are the product, not the client. The money comes from advertisers, and to meet the expectations of suppliers These companies are engaged in a race to the data, to take ever increasing risks in relation to our privacy to produce profits.

So what? We will deliver not the genie in the bottle. Our data are there, and they will not disappear tomorrow. It seems difficult to speculate on a massive dumping and Google. It also seems unlikely that competing systems with different business models may emerge in the near future, even if the supplier relationship management (VRM) seems to have clear potential to solve this problem, the road is still long for find the dynamics that will shake the giants.

No, what we need, says Toby Stevens is to pay Google, Facebook and others for their services, by hard cash rather than through our personal data. "

Toby Stevens and explain that it would pay a monthly fee to ensure that the phone does not share its data and protects his privacy. It would pay for a Facebook service with appropriate controls for more granular and the assurance that its use and its relationship will never be analyzed by Facebook or by third party applications, unless explicitly agreed.

The problem is that to reach such a stage, companies should also be capable of showing "the dark heart of their business model", which will not happen in the current climate, says. For in fact, for now, nobody can really set a price, to emphasize the risk of market capitalization or investment are endless in fact grossly inflated.

However, for Toby Stevens, the challenge of VRM - such as exploring MyDex or MiData British government initiative , launched by the Fing around the project MesInfos , or several start-ups trying to transform our personal data virtual currency - is there. If we want greater respect for privacy, data open and free services, we must find a way to do that is more attractive than the current business models. "It is necessary to show that users can pay and we all need to prepare ourselves to pay to preserve our privacy. "

What is our privacy?

The idea of Toby Stevens is certainly interesting. But is it realistic? Many of us (not all) would pay a few euros a year so that our data is not transferred to other companies. For data analysis made of our data is not sold to third parties ...

Would we be truly willing to pay for our privacy? That's the question posed Somini Sengupta for the New York Times . Researchers at the German Institute for Economic Research and Cambridge University recently conducted a study on the subject of monetization of privacy , in Germany, where the issue of personal data is an acute issue. The study aimed to understand how to enter into an account in the decision to buy or not revealing personal data, by testing several proposals for provision of services, such as buying a cinema ticket in several modalities, including some offer a discount in exchange for personal information. Only 29% of participants chose to pay 50 cents more to maintain their possession by their mobile number and only 9% of participants agreed to pay a little more to avoid receiving an e-mail advertising. When there is no price difference, users overwhelmingly choose the least intrusive service.

The study concludes with recommendations stressing that users should always have options to disclose less personal information, although this difference leads to services at prices slightly higher. Facilitate comparison not only prices, but the terms of use of personal data, could also in future be a differentiating information.

In fact, estimates Somini Sengupta, the issue of personal data is often polarized between those who argue that privacy is dead and those who are seeking ways of increasingly sophisticated legal protection for privacy, attacked in increasingly spaces. And research is certainly still a little late to show what people actually do in their private life, and the difference between what they say and what they do.

Somini Sengupta concludes with a very small example illustration. He used an online service to invite friends to a party. At one point, he had to choose between paying an extra $ 10 for an invitation without advertising or continue to use the free service. He made as many would have done. He was subjected to advertising his friends - probably because the additional cost was not adjusted to the level of nuisance induced.

This is certainly a good lesson. We are so used to having to manage spam and marketing and they finally so little immediate impact, that the best way to ignore it has become to accept it, live with, hoping that our filters are growing faster that analysis of data, much like in the race between protective mechanisms and hackers.

So far so good you might say ... Yes, for now, they hold almost until the progress of data analysis does make might crack.