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Buying new clothes, looking for recipes, talking with friends or even looking for the opening hours of the local cinema has never been easier and quicker than now, allowing complete freedom, and yet our privacy is permanently threatened. The rapid growth of the Internet due, notably, to the widespread diffusion of connected devices made us forget about a fundamental right: privacy. Unconsciously, everyone is giving away loads of personal data to companies, that will sooner or later use them to make profit, and people have to protect from that. This is where appears the concept of Willingness to pay and Willingness to accept.
Even if I value all of my personal data, I have to accept the fact that being on the internet means giving a part my privacy to companies. That’s the way it is, and everyone that goes online has to be aware of that. With the rise of free access and free apps, privacy is more and more in danger. Of course, some regulations exist to protect internet users’ privacy, but everything that is put on the internet won’t never be fully erased, neither protected. The last document leak of “Panama papers” can support my thinking. Thereby, that’s why I will always have doubts about WTP facilities. The balance between WTP and WTA has to be done personally between two costs: cost of privacy lost for WTA and monetary cost for WTP, but costs will always remain. Like Forbes said: “When the service is free, the user is the product” (1)
It is important to notice that even if I consider every personal data as important, some are more than other. I wouldn’t be against sharing “superficial” personal data as my age, way of living… with a WTA, but I set a limit to what I’m ready to share. I would say that the real problem is not really the privacy (personal data) that you give away when navigating, but it is the way it can have returns on you. If a company looks at the videos I watch to suggest me others, I don’t mind. But if it spies at my messages to use them against me after, it is then more serious. I would pay to keep private information safe, like my account data, identity or whatever might put me in danger by sharing. It is then clear that my privacy preferences vary from a transaction to another.
I would conclude by saying that everyone going on the internet is facing personal data stealing, but it is a personal decision to take whether to protect more or not your information as everyone has a different valuation of its private data.
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Posting personal things on the internet has never been my favourite cup of tea.
What Nico Sell explains [1] ” the internet is forever”, has been told to me years ago and I haven’t forgotten it.
As an example, I even hesitated when deciding to mention my full name or not as
the author of this comment… Of course I don’t refuse all the things that
comes from the internet and I post stuff on social medias etc… The way I value those informations depends highly on the context and some human-randomness.
Still, I think that my WTA is quite lower than the average one. Indeed, I really don’t like seeing purchase recommendations based on my previous searches when I am on a website.
I see it as an intrusion into my private life. At the same time, I have to admit that I enjoy receiving recommendations like “Customers who bought this product also purchased…”.
This is, from my point of view, less seen as a sharing of my personal data, even if I know that the website owner wil do the same with the informations given by me.
Even if my WTA is not that high, my WTP remains lower than my WTA because I’m a student and I don’t want to pay great amounts of money or to spend too much time on alternatives solutions. However, I get some satisfaction by making some searches about future purchases while using “private browsing” or even other computers than my usual one because it is not too much time-consuming. I see it as a type of “confusing action” as mentioned by Nico Sell [1], even if I perfectly know that my “privacy” is quite limited [2].
Frog’s results you mentionned are very interresting and, from my perspective, not that much surprising. We “naturally” think that our bank did just created
p-c banking services in order to facilitate our actions and decrease its structural costs. Are our private informations more private there than on social media?
Let us not become paranoid but this is, to me, a relevant issue of the 21th century.
To conclude and, in my opinion, each person’s privacy preferences is correlated with different factors:
-the way she split the information she could potentially post (personal, professional, public,…);
-the way she values these informations (does it matter if some people have access to it?);
-her awareness of how information can be collected about her (and also the control she has on those access);
-the way she evaluates the web security;
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CpVaYXWOGY
[2] :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/private-browsing-use-firefox-without-history
https://www.google.be/intl/en/policies/privacy/?fg=1
and the other web browser’s “private” browsing.
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In their seminal Book, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier laud the vast benefits of Big Data. Self-driving cars, fighting diseases, automating jobs, the possibilities are endless. No wonder Big Data has become one of the business world’s most widespread buzzwords. With the emergence of Big Data comes a significant transformation: users’ personal data is becoming an increasingly important economic input.
This transformation has caught the attention of regulators and privacy advocates. Indeed, there is an underlying fear that “personal data” transactions – whereby consumers exchange personal data for services – might sometimes harm consumers or society as a whole. In more economic terms, there are two potential problems. First, do some personal data transactions reduce consumer surplus? This is the case if consumers’ net utility from a transaction is negative. Second – if the answer to the first question is yes – do these transactions reduce social welfare? This is the case if the gains to the firm are smaller than the loss of utility to the consumers [1]. Note that for either of these problems to occur, consumers must necessarily be irrational [2], misinformed, coerced, or there must be guile on the part of the company that receives the information [3]. Otherwise they would simply not partake in such transactions.
In order to deal with these questions, authorities/economists will have to resolve a number of complex issues. One such issue is the expectations of users (this is very close to what Mrs. Scholz refers to as contextual effects). Because “personal data” transactions are non-monetary, it is difficult for authorities to identify the value that users attach to their personal information. When they attempt to do so, I would argue that is important for authorities not to overlook an important fact: the potential negative utility that consumers suffer from exchanging personal information depends on the subsequent use of the information by its recipient.
Consumers must thus form expectations about the way in which their private data will be used in order to place a value on it [4]. For example, I might be willing to let Facebook know that I go to bars on weeknights if it only sells this information to advertisers. It would be much more costly for me if Facebook suddenly decided to sell this information to my current or potential employers (and I would thus ask for a more significant counterparty in order to part with the information). Another example concerns the individualization of information [5]. Take my Google Search record. If I expect that this information will only published in aggregate form – such as Google Trends [6] – I suffer little negative utility from giving it away. On the other hand, Google could allow other people to view my search history. In this second case, I could be directly identified and I would suffer a much higher negative utility from giving the information away.
Given the impact of expectations on the value that consumers attach to their personal data, one would expect companies to go to some lengths in order to commit to using users’ information in specific ways [7]. This turns out to be the case in practice. Facebook has an incredibly detailed Data Policy [8]. The policy notably outlines what type of data Facebook collects and, more importantly, how it may use this data. For example, Facebook’s terms specifically state that when private information is shared with advertisers, the user is not “personally identifiable”. Likewise, Google commits to ask for users’ consent before it shares “personally identifiable” data with third parties [9].
An objection is that most users probably never read these terms of service. Accordingly, one might argue that these terms cannot possibly affect their behavior. This seems shortsighted to me. By making commitments regarding the use of personal information, online platforms avoid severe backlash from media outlets and privacy advocates [10]. If left unchecked, this backlash could have an important impact on consumers’ cost/benefit analyses and firms’ bottom line.
Another objection is that firms adopt these policies to appease regulators rather than attract consumers. I would counter that, regardless of regulation, firms have an interest in making commitments as far as their use of personal information is concerned. This helps them to obtain the information in the first place. To cite but one example, Facebook spontaneously increased the protection of WhatsApp messages, presumably in order to retain more users [11].
To summarize, I agree that we should always think of the value of personal information in a given context. When we say things like “users are willing to give away their home address and phone number for X euros”, we should always consider the expected use of this information by its recipient.
[1] This is just another spin on the age old debate between consumer surplus and social welfare. In that regard, Kaldor and Hicks argued forcefully that the later objective should be favored because it leads to potential-Pareto improvements. In other words, the welfare gains are always big enough to compensate the losers through lump sum transfers and potentially leave no one worse off. See Nicholas Kaldor, Welfare propositions of economics and interpersonal comparisons of utility, THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL (1939). See also John R Hicks, The foundations of welfare economics, THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL (1939).
[2] See notably Alessandro Acquisti, Nudging privacy: The behavioral economics of personal information, DIGITAL ENLIGHTENMENT YEARBOOK 2012 (2012).
[3] In which case the issue would be akin to the contractual hold-up problem identified by Williamson. See Oliver E Williamson, Transaction-cost economics: the governance of contractual relations, 22 THE JOURNAL OF LAW & ECONOMICS (1979).
[4] A number of authors have argued that taking context and expectations into account is essential in order to deal with privacy issues. See notably HELEN NISSENBAUM, PRIVACY IN CONTEXT: TECHNOLOGY, POLICY, AND THE INTEGRITY OF SOCIAL LIFE (Stanford University Press. 2009).
[5] The notion of individualized information was notably addressed in the Jentsz et al. study. The authors draw a distinction between private/public information and personal/aggregate information. See Nicola Jentzsch, Sören Preibusch & Andreas Harasser, Study on monetising privacy: An economic model for pricing personal information, ENISA PUBLICATION (2012).
[6] See https://www.google.com/trends/.
[7] This is especially true because many firms in data-heavy industries are multi-sided platforms whose competitiveness hinges on attracting as many consumers as possible in order to sell their eyeballs to advertisers.
[8] https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.
[9] See https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/#infouse. These terms notably state that: “We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.”
[10] Media outlets routinely comment on updates to platforms’ privacy policies. See, for example, http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-gets-down-to-privacy-basics-for-simplicitys-sake/.
[11] See notably http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/gary-newe/whatsapp-privacy_b_9700432.html.
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The personal data that I value the most are communications, transactions, and contacts. I’m less reluctant to share private information as long as it stays anonymous. Sharing information bothers me less if I know the final purpose. For example, if I the provided information will help third parts to categorize myself in a consumer segment in order to improve their sales’ strategy, offers, discounts, etc. And as explain in the article to whom I reveal this information matters too.
I do observe differences in my privacy preferences; I’m more reluctant to pay for privacy (WTP) than accept a reward to reveal it (WTA). Paying for privacy means that I would have to share information if I consider the price is too high. When I accept a reward I’m feeling more able to refuse it if it does not satisfy me. The terms of the problem are in how much you value your own private information and how much others value it. For the first part, I experience difficulties to value private information as we cannot compare it, it’s intangible. To make a comparison I would say that this is kind of the same problems that services providers have in order to set prices. The value may depend as well on the use that others will have of it. Nowadays users and consumers usually do not always know for what purposes companies want’s the information and how they are going to use it. And that’s why when I decide to share information I do not know how much companies or third parties value it. All this unknowns’ variable makes difficult to have a clear point of view when you provide or share information. And third parties can profit from this blurry context in order to maximize their profits.
Nevertheless, when I provide information on taste I feel unable to say if the information provided will hurt me by increasing the price for the goods I desire or it will just help companies to propose me a product that better match my tastes. How companies maximize profits? Helping consumers to find what their taste is will definitely improve their offer. Then consumers provide a competitive advantage over other companies that do not have this information. This could allow them to increase prices. I’m less reluctant to share information as I know there is a big uncertainty about the impact of my information on prices or level of consumption. I would be more concern about privacy if I could say what the purpose behind it really is. So I would say that I’m more privacy-aware when I know the information is sensitive as it could have a direct influence on my life: banking information, passwords, e-mail accounts, social lives…
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Clearly, I don’t like the idea that companies look for my personal data and then sell them to a third party. I feel like I got robbed because they sell something that is mine. Though, I have to admit that sometimes when I make research on Internet, targeted advertising helps me to find what I need more quickly so one can say that it can help to reduce the searching costs. The willingness to share our data depends on the type of data and on whom we give them to, like mentioned in the text. But another reason is in which way the ‘receiver’ will handle these data and for which goal. For example, in the UK, “consumers revealed that they would give out personal information online if it could help the government better plan and deliver services, or prevent and detect crime, fraud or terrorism.”(1) So, if it is for the greater good, people don’t hesitate to release their data. Of course, people will share more easily their personal information to brands/institutions they trust (2).
Then, I would say that we can’t really know if those benefits outweigh the costs of sharing personal information. It depends on people and on their way they value their data. It also depends on what they get in return. Nowadays, companies invent more and more offers in order to convince consumers to disclose their personal information. So the answer to this question is not obvious.
.
https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2015/09/motivating-customers-share-personal-data-fs.html (1)
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 (2)
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It is question of basic notions in Economics of Privacy. At first it looks easy to me to integrate these notions. Some of them seem to be common sense but other ones are nearly counterintuitive. Indeed the distinction between WTP and WTA made me think about it. In both case, the individual loses either privacy or money.
Concerning WTP: Here the individual is willing to pay in order to limit his Internet provider for analysing personal information such as browsing history. There is a lost of money.
Concerning WTA: Here the individual is willing to accept money in order the invasion of his privacy. There is a lost of privacy.
Unfortunately, it seems that a bigger fraction of individuals is willing to accept and then to lose privacy. This gap couldn’t be explained by standard economic theories. According to me, there is a difference between individual’s WTA and WTP. Indeed some information could be considered as properties for some individuals and as public for other.
This implies that privacy concerns vary across transactions but also across individuals. Finally it seems that there is also a gap between privacy attitudes and privacy behaviour. But this can be explained due to contextual effects. It means that the value individuals attach to their personal information depends on the type of information and depending to whom it will be revealed. That corresponds to common sense according to me.
In my opinion, I agree with Behavioural Economics. Some kind of information can become dangerous to reveal if it falls into the wrong hands. But this isn’t really the case if it falls into our Internet provider. That’s something we had control on for now. I don’t see my Internet provider as a threat. But I think I could be ready to pay if this Internet provider was able to give me full control on it.
On the other hand, I value some information more than other. Indeed some personal information such as my bank code, my facebook profile, all information that are more sensitive, information about my personal life. For all of those information I can observe a difference between the WTP and WTA perspective. There is an opposite balance for information that I don’t care at all.
Finally, I will give examples where I my privacy preferences vary across transactions or with the context. Indeed, I demand more privacy for personal texting on Facebook or via my phone for instance. On the other hand, I don’t care if my friends can see what is my last purchase on Amazon. I don’t care to give my e-mail address but I am more hesitant to provide my phone number when I register on a website.
To conclude, I would like to finish by speaking about trends. Indeed it seems that as technology advances, it becomes more and more difficult to keep for himself personal information. The cost of processing information decreases. That will lead to my mind that WTA and WTP is clearly depending on individuals but also on generation. Some newborn children will live in a world where personal information is more and more easily to buy. They will grow up in this context and building their own WTA and WTP on this vision.
Again, even it is approaches more Behavioural Economics, it seems that the context is important and I will give some personal examples to join their opinion. For instance, I am ready to give personal information such as medical status or composition of my blood according the context. If it is used in order to make research and scientifics advances, why not? The context here is the most important to make my point. According to Alessandro Acquisit & Co, “In digital economies, consumers’ ability to make informed decisions about their privacy is severely hindered, because consumers are often in a position of imperfect or asymmetric information regarding when their data is collected, for what purposes, and with what consequences.”(5)
Sources:
1. https://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/06/putting-a-price-on-privacy-an-introduction-to-the-economics-of-privacy/
2. Roland, T., (2002). The Customer Economics Of Internet Privacy. Academy Of Marketing Science. 30(4). En ligne : http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:8888/abicomplete/docview/224861703/71211A30C90442EFPQ/2?accountid=12156
3. Schwartz, P,. (1997). Privacy and The Economics of personal heath care Information. Texas Law Review. 1(75). En ligne : http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:8888/abicomplete/docview/203676831/71211A30C90442EFPQ/5?accountid=12156
4. https://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/05/putting-a-price-on-privacy-are-there-benefits-to-sharing-private-information/
5. Acquisit, A, Curtis, T & Wagman, L,. (2016). The Economics of Privacy
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I think that people do value their private information and most of them are afraid to display them over the Internet.
As the first article said, it appears as an obvious thing to say that consumers do not like they surfing habits to be monitored.
But it also pointed out that consumer could actually benefit from sharing personal information, such as their browsing or purchasing history, with online service providers.
The principles of behaviour-based price discrimination and targeted information that are set up thanks to the consumer’s private information might benefit him.
In this article, we saw how difficult it is to value private information and that in order to try to do it; we should rely on several concepts.
I observe differences in my privacy preferences when I look at the issue either from a WTP perspective or a WTA perspective but it is also highly related to the kind of information.
For example, I don’t value as much my browsing history as information related to my identity or security (social networking password, banking information,etc..) .
Regarding my browsing history, I wouldn’t pay to keep that information private and I would agree to be paid by a company in exchange of the access of this information, as I don’t value highly that information.
On the contrary, I would pay to keep private information related to my identity and security and I wouldn’t accept to be paid by any company as I highly value that kind of information and I would be afraid not to control the access to that kind of personal information.
Having said that, I can affirm that my privacy preferences vary across transactions as my concerns will vary across the different transactions.
My private preferences also vary with the context as my trust is going to be different depending on the type of institution I’m dealing with.
For example, I give much more confidence to a financial institution, as I know that they are facing strong regulations and that they can’t do whatever they want with my private information.
On the other hand, I have much less confidence when it comes to social networking sites or online sellers.
Indeed, when you create an account on a social network site, the website tells you that you give them the right to use your personal information.
I don’t like that kind of policy, as I have no control on what they are doing with it and to whom they could give access to it.
To sum up, it is an interesting article as it points out the fact that each consumer has its own valuation about private information.
It shows that consumers are not going to give the same importance about different information and that’s what makes different prices subscription possible.
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1. What about you? What personal data do you value?
I believe that in the Willingness to Accept there should be a distinction. You can accept to give/sell some information about your activity online (as in the example from the PWC study: demographic data) or you can accept that a platform uses your information (Facebook for example). The difference is that, in the first, you have a control over the information you give, in the latter, you have a control over the information you share, but there is content generated by the information you share that you don’t necessary control nor want the platform to use (in the Facebook example: comments on a photo you’ve shared, private message from a friend, etc.). So I would make a distinction between the information you willingly agree to share and the information you have no control over.
The personal data I value are the private conversations with my friends (Facebook messages, emails, etc.). I personally don’t mind about a platform analyzing my purchase habits. If we were to transform this in real life: when you go to the same place and buy the same sandwich every noon, the person working there will know your preference and will even greed you by: “the same?”. Is that intruding your privacy? I don’t believe so.
2.Do you observe differences in your privacy preferences depending on whether you look at the issue from a WTA or WTP perspective?
There are differences according to the value one gives to the private information. I don’t quite give too much importance to the information I unwillingly share online, so the WTP to protect those information is significantly lower than the WTA.
3. And finally, do your privacy preferences vary across transactions or with the context? Do you have examples for which type of online transactions you are more privacy-concerned or privacy-aware?
Of course they would: if I do research online for my master thesis I don’t mind sharing my web browser history. That would not be the case if I were searching for symptoms for a disease or pregnancy. Information about my personal and intimate problems would be most guarded.
I personally don’t believe in privacy online, the only protection is just that there is content that a platform can legally use and the one it can’t. I did programming in high school and I know to what extent a good hacker can access and modify information. When you go online you unwillingly generate content, it is up to the legislation to limit excessive usage of that content. As the Microsoft site explains: “Once data is published online, it is effectively there forever and, depending on the privacy policy of the company holding the data, may ultimately be seen by anyone on the Internet. “ (http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/information.aspx)
To answer the bigger question: how can you put a price on privacy? Firstly I don’t believe in a program that would 100% secure all the content you generate online. For the argument’s sake let’s assume it could exist. I believe the price should be set accordingly to the number of internet sites you visit. When a person has a limited online activity and visits the same limited number of internet sites, the price should be set at marginal costs (or close to the marginal cost). The more the number of internet sites increases, the more the price should increase as well.
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With the emergence of the web 2.0, plenty of informations about almost everyone that has an internet access not available before, became. Now this large amount of data allows plenty of possibilities such as marketing, remarketing, research,et cetera for business companies or organisations. As emphasize in the series of 3 articles we spread our personal datas all over the web and nearly who wants can pick it and exploit it. Because our personal datas have several utilities and that there are potential supplier and buyer, it has created a market where personal data are highly valuated.
It’s clear that this market creates a lot of issues. Firstly because personal data business is a sensitive topic. Secondly because the Internet gathers players from all around the world and destroy the borders of countries that do not have same privacy legislations or culture which creates a lot of issues. Well it’s not easy to give an account of everything as it’s a very wide topic and I’ll focus now about the questions asked at the end of the article.
What personal data do I value ?
In my point of view, there are 3 categories of personal data, and I value each one differently. The first one is about all the data about my identity such as where I live, my age, my name, my language, et cetera. These data have for me no value because they where already available before the web 2.0. Indeed physical stores asks you about this information when you get advantages such as reduction card and I have no doubt that this data is sold or shared. Then I don’t see why pay to not share them while they are available elsewhere than on internet.
The second category of data is data about my preferences such as my web-site historic or articles that I search/(didn’t)buy et cetera. This data allows companies to target me with things that are likely to interest me or to do re-marketing. Actually these category of data is used to do well-targeted ads. I do not value them as well because I do not care about the fact that people are doing statistics with that and because I’m not longer concern by internet ads while I use ad-block which blocks all internet ads. I guess that it should be interesting to study what is the impact of such a software..
The last category is about what we will call «very personal data». This very personal data are all the data that you produce by yourself such has personal messages on Facebook or your photos et cetera. I value them because I don’t think that everyone should have an access to it. I mean that industry which are buying ‘very personal data’ are doing voyeurism. It’s like if someone comes into your house and has a look at your photo scrapbook. Nonetheless I try to put the less possible ‘very personal data’ on the internet. I would have been interested by such service as ensuring of ‘very personal data’ but as far as I can’t get real proof that my datas were indeed protected I’ll not buy such service and just care about what I put on Internet.
Do you observe differences in your privacy preferences depending on whether you look at the issue from a WTA or WTP perspective?
As most of the people, I observe differences in my preferences. Added to what has been explained in the article I believe that there is also a ‘power’ factor. I mean private information is supposed to be mine but on the internet it’s not the case. Then I feel like ‘Why would I have to pay to keep for myself something that is supposed to be mine ?’. It’s quite the same as if I had to pay burglar to not burglar my house. It’s pretty frustrating and then I will not accept to pay large amount of money for privacy.
Do your privacy preferences vary across transactions or with the context?
I ll state that my privacy preferences vary with the context along 2 variables. The first one is how much I evaluate the value proposition of the website. I mean that the more I will have interest in the value proposition of the website the more I will agree to give private information. For example my personal information are far more detailed on Facebook then on Google+ even if they are quite the same kind of social-network. The explanation comes from that I have more interest in sharing information on Facebook than on Google+ because for instance most of my friends are on Facebook. The second one is about my confidence in the website, if I don’t feel confident with the privacy policy of the website share less as possible very personal information. There are plenty of websites that ask for register and then to register to access their contents. When I do not need that much the content I just go away.
Do you have examples for which type of online transactions you are more privacy-concerned or privacy-aware?
As explained before, in my view there are 2 variables that define my privacy preferences. If a website do not give me content that should interest me or that I don’t feel confident with its privacy policy I should be very privacy-concerned.
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In today’s digital world, the disparity between the perceived value of personal data, and its actual value is probably at its widest. People value their private data more than others could buy it from them. However, most of people value only things such as their passwords, their personal bank’s account information and really personal data.
For me, all those things are true but for example I don’t care if someone look at my browser history. In fact I already think that all of our data are already shared in some servers and could be hacked easily. Plus, I don’t really purchase things on the internet because I prefer to see the product before buying it. So the data that I use on the internet are available to everybody and that’s why I don’t really care about the transaction of data that I could share.
Of course some people would pay in order to protect these information but would also accept it if the price is too high. I think that people like too much the internet to give it up for some personal data that everybody is already sharing.
Furthermore, I think that it is a good idea in order to help us to browse lesser than it could be. I mean that if they already have your data, it will be easier for you to find something that may interest you. It is natural that it will attract you.
The cookies used on a lot of websites are all used in order to whether help you to find something that might interest you whether to have a more fluid browsing (i.e. when you close a tab by mistake and it reappears when you reopen it).
However, it could also be very unpleasant when you are not interested in it and that it will always appear. A solution for people that don’t like to share all these information could use a private navigator.
Another fact that is interesting, is that a lot of people think that it is normal that the government “spies” people on the internet. They think that it could be a measure of security in order to maintain peace.
http://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/high-tech/vie-privee-et-internet-deux-mondes-incompatibles_1492254.html
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140509-how-much-is-your-facebook-worth
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/9605078/How-much-do-you-value-your-personal-data.html
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I know that according to the majority of people, the privacy on internet is a really hot topic.
However this is not my case.
The only personal data I value are my passwords for mails and when it’s related to banking information.
I personally have a really neutral opinion about “privacy” in my browsing history: the fact that I know that my history can be analysed is a little bit unpleasant of course but I also see positive facts about this.
The fist point would be personal adds: the fact is that the personal adds I receive are way less awkward than the aleatory ones. To explain this I would say that people nowadays assume that you will always get a “personnal” add, for my case it is mainly about trips, japan culture and videogames. However I already received aleatory adds about women’s clothing or dating sites which were not relevant and more compromising than the “real” targetted advertisments.
The second point is that I know that the industries also use those information in order to do discrimination pricing, targetted pricing and special offers ( we can take the example with AT&T and its privacy option) which can be in the end a positive spillovers for all the users.
For the second question I agree with the fact that there is a difference between WTA and WTP the better example I can use is the answer of your question above:
Because I don’t really care about privacy I won’t pay for the option of “secured” internet, my WTP would be 0.
Knowing this my WTA could also be 0 because I accept the situation but since the company is willing to give me something I will obviously accept the offer and try to maximise my benefit.
Nevertheless I have to add that all of those questions about security, privacy protection etc. depend of a lot of external factors and can be different regarding the situation. My answers are then not fixed and unchangeable but may vary regarding the context or the person.
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At a time when private data can be so easily shared (and eventually exploited), people tend to enjoy the possibility of not letting internet providers seeing it. However, the use of private data can have very positive repercussions for consumers, as can be seen for example in price discrimination (which enables sellers to propose a price which nearly corresponds perfectly to the willingness of their clients). Another use of this private data could be to identify how the consumer perceives the product/service and then try to come with a solution in the case this perception is not as positive as the firm would like it to be.
Like the majority of the people, I don’t really like the idea of sharing private data on the internet. This private data can consist of telephone number, email address, home address, or any other information which could give the chance to a firm to contact me personally to promote a particular production I might like or to collect my impression about a particular brand.
Another category of private data that I don’t like to share because firms clearly abuse from it is the browsing history. It is quite impressive and annoying to see the amount of targeted advertising/suggestions we are confronted to when we go on websites such as Facebook, Youtube, Spotify or any movie theater website, for example. I find that very annoying and end up bored very quickly only because I get the impression of always seeing the same things whatever the website I decide to “visit”. But the private data I value the most is any information related to the banking world or any financial information. I am not as ease at all with the idea of introducing my account number and my code even less. I know it can be done in a very secure way nowadays but this doesn’t modify the reluctance I have towards this. However, in certain situation such as booking a flight online for example, it is the only way to do it, so I don’t have the choice…
Although I don’t like to share my private data in general, there are some “differences in my privacy preferences depending on whether I look at the issue from a WTA or a WTP perspective. Obviously, I will have a strong Willingness To Pay to protect any information of mine related to banking or finance because I sense the possibility of dramatic losses in this domain exists. On the other hand, I think I would be ready to accept some form of compensation in exchange of my browser history, my email or home address, or even my phone number because it can’t have financial negative repercussions on me and I can always choose to ignore annoying mails or suggestions if I want to.
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What personal data do you value?
I fully agree with the last part of this paper. I do not value much data that are less personal such as “Am I a student or not”, “How many siblings do I have”, etc.. But as soon as it involves more specific details such as “Where are you studying”, “In which city do I live”, etc.. I become much more reluctant to share information. That is the reason why I do not quite like Facebook knowing that it shares your private information to marketing companies. Therefore, I do not divulge any private information concerning myself or at least I try to not to.
Do you observe differences in your privacy preferences depending on whether you look at the issue from a WTA or WTP perspective?
To be honest I found it quite difficult to differentiate the willingness to pay and willingness to accept. After deeper researches on the subject, I understood it as WTP measures the values of something you want to buy (in this case the value you are ready to pay in order to keep your privacy) and WTA measures the values of something you are ready to see (in this case the price you are ready to get when loosing some privacy).
From my point of view, privacy is quite important. I will be ready to pay a high price to keep my information private as well as I will be ready to accept to lose some of my privacy for a high price. So I do not understand why there would be a difference between the two. As long as it is care about it the price would be the same.
Do your privacy preferences vary across transactions or with the context?
Yes, it does vary. If you take once again Facebook, I do not mind that pieces of my private information are used for marketing purposes as long as I have the choice of which information I agree to give. But, if it is compulsory to fill in personal records I deserve the right to decide if it can be used or not.
Do you have examples for which type of online transactions you are more privacy-concerned or privacy-aware?
I am definitely more privacy-concerned when I am facing social network websites. When you use that kind of websites you publish so many things about yourself and your life but also about your friends and family. You expose your preferences, what you like and dislike. You are offering all your private information on a silver platter. Afterwards, those websites collect, analyse and store all our data. Finally, they sell them to very targeted advertising.
Otherwise, on any other websites that I have to fill in information to register I am more privacy-aware. For instance, when you buy something on-line you have to give some records like 3suisse, Booking.com and many other services on-line. I feel more comfortable to share my personal information as they have privacy policy.
References:
http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=econ_las_pubs
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130502052254-64875646-how-facebook-exploits-your-private-information
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People value private data, they like to keep their browsing history private. But as it said in the first-part of this post, there are also benefits from the fact that internet providers can see your personal data. It gives the opportunity to firms to do price discrimination and also to do targeted advertising.
The main question of this post is “How much would you be willing to pay in order to prevent your Internet provider from tracking and analyzing your browsing history?”.
Personally, the data that I value are my e-mail address, passwords, obviously banking information but also my browsing history. Indeed, I find it annoying to have advertisements related to what you have been searching on the internet because I don’t want anyone who goes on my computer to know what I have looked for recently. And some times, some organizations abuse of their targeted advertisements, for example, recently I have been looking on the internet different universities websites and for one of them, I have seen afterwards its advertisement on Youtube for weeks, it was on every video all the time. I found it really exaggerated and annoying, furthermore, in my opinion it gives a bad image of the university.
There is a difference between the willingness to pay (WTP) in order to to protect your privacy and the willingness to accept (WTA) some money in exchange of private data. I think I will be ready to pay to protect my banking and financial information, and not to receive money to give it to internet providers. On the contrary, I wouldn’t be willing to pay to protect my browsing history. Indeed, I find it annoying to have targeted advertisements but not enough to pay to avoid it. And so, of course, I will be willing to get money to reveal my browsing history.
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What about you? What personal data do you value?
According to my experience, the data for which I’m more concerned are my passwords of my emails, the one of my banking account and the ones of social media. Substantially the main features explained in the first section of the article.
Do you observe differences in your privacy preferences depending on whether you look at the issue from a WTA or WTP perspective?
I observe differences in the way I value my privacy in this two contests. If I have to buy some services and I have to pay more in order to protect some personal information, I’ll be more prone to do so only to protect my email passwords and my banking account ones. On the other hand, I won’t accept an equivalent amount of money to renounce to my privacy.
This may be explained by the fact that there is zero substitutability between my privacy and each of the private goods or services supplied by the market, so while I’ll be willing to pay a finite amount for an increase of my privacy, there is not an equivalent compensation that I would accept to forgo this increase. The reason for having so different WTA and WTP is because we don’t have to take into consideration only an income effect but also a stronger substitution effect.
And finally, do your privacy preferences vary across transactions or with the context? Do you have examples for which type of online transactions you are more privacy-concerned or privacy-aware?
Absolutely yes. Generally I won’t be interested in stopping cookies that trace the pages visited, because I consider ads that are coherent with my preferences as a valuable service done for free. I think that this is a way to increase competition and my benefit are normally higher than the disadvantage to lose a little of my privacy. I think that this is something that really enhance the costumer possibilities saving money and also time. For the showrooming process, i.e. relating the offline experience with the online one, this is a valuable source to do your best choice in your shopping journey. But in which consist showrooming as an important and innovative trend? Essentially you go into the shops to see, touch, smell products and after you chose the product that you prefer, then you go online to track it down elsewhere at the lowest price.
As I already mention my main concern is the safety of the online customer journey, so I think that one of the most valuable service that allows you to protect your banking account and also to have a form of insurance is the service offered by Paypal. Creating a charge card with really low cost, I can safely have online transactions also with unknown enterprises using eBay platform.
Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: How Much Can They Differ?, W. Michael Hanemann, The American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jun., 1991), pp. 635-64
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28277/showrooming
https://www.paypal.com
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I would start my comment by quoting and important sentence of the article that perfectly summarizes my position on this matter : “the value consumers attach to their personal data most likely depends on things such as the type of information or to whom the information is revealed.”. This is key to me. Whether we talk about my WTP or my WTA, it will all depend on which kind of data the provider/media is asking me for as well as who is asking it. Another to point to consider, although might be difficult to answer, is exactly what are they going to do with it. I think that overall, the deal has to be specified in all three points I just mentioned. I’m certainly not going to sign a deal to provider like AT&T where I’m allowing them to just access my “private data”. This is way to broad and this is certainly going to scare me. As we really are in the beginning of such deals, and as I think that the number of it is going to increase, I think that specifying the deals and reassuring consumers of what is going to be made with their data (and which kind), is going to be a key success factor.
One first point to clear out is the kind of data I really value. As a matter of fact, there are very few data I would be willing to pay to protect as of now. I absolutely don’t mind that websites, social media or providers know which kind of shoes I bought on the internet, which of articles I browsed on Amazon or even which kind of websites I go to. Overall, my web-browsing data isn’t something I value and I’m sometimes even glad that websites use it (think about the recommendation systems). This kind of data, I wouldn’t be willing to pay at all to protect it. If any provider is willing to pay to access it, bring the money!
Then there is some sort of intermediary type of data. In this, I put stuffs like my email address, address, smartphone data (number, text messages, etc.), my interactions on social media, etc. Those stuffs definitely have more value to my eyes. However, I’m not really sure I’d be willing to pay to prevent companies from accessing it. This is where the importance of knowing what they’ll do with my data comes into play. Those are true personal and private data but I’m not sure how any company could cause me any harm or disturb me with it. We have to keep in mind that we’re talking about big, well-know companies. They won’t just go out and disclose my text messages just for fun. In terms of my WTP, it’s all about knowing what they’ll do with my data. As far as my WTA is concerned, that price would certainly be higher than my WTP but also depending on the type of use.
Finally there’s a third type of data I’d call the sensitive data. There are actually very few as I said earlier but the first thing that comes to mind is my banking data. This type of data is truly the only type I absolutely don’t want anyone accessing. This means that my WTP would be pretty high. But, and this is a big difference with the article, I wouldn’t say that my WTA price would be higher. I’d say that it is non-existent. If I truly value my data and that I’m ready to pay to protect it, it means I really don’t want anyone accessing it and that therefore no amount of money could buy access to it.
I’d conclude my comment by stating once again that this is just a personal opinion. Who I am and what I do deeply influenced my opinion on the subject. I’m still just 21 years old and I’m still studying. This means that I’m not working for anybody (or not full-time), I haven’t created/written anything of high value, I don’t own any secret or valuable information, etc. I’m very aware of all those things. I’m also very aware that 5 or 10 years from now, I’ll probably have more valuable data and that my opinion on this matter is very likely to have changed by that time. One final thing to take into account is about my age and generation. Our generation was almost born in new technology and grew with internet. We’re way more used to using Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. This means that we’re maybe less reluctant to giving information than our parents for example. But this could also mean that we’re more blind and less aware of the danger of disclosing data to this websites.
Show lessThanks for your opinion. You implicitly agreed that your comment would be openly accessible on this blog. So, I suppose that this is the kind of data you accept to share freely 😉