One of the obvious existing “information markets” is the world of consumer loyalty schemes. Major loyalty schemes, such as those of Boots, Tesco, and the multi-retailer Nectar scheme are explicitly exchanging points for information. Whilst few people know what a point is actually worth (and that’s because it’s not easy to know, but that’s another story) a lot of people seem to think that giving de... »
The murmur of debate and discussion concerning the proper use, and increasing abuse, of their citizens’ personal data by governments has risen to a crescendo since the first of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the US’s NSA PRISM and the UK’s GCHQ Tempora programmes were publicied by the Guardian in June 2013. Alongside that there has been a steady stream of continued exposure of the way in which... »
An interesting article by Adam Tanner on the Forbes website in which he traces where one particular piece of junk mail came from. Tanner is a fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Government and is writing a book on the business of personal data. He’s looking for answers to questions such as who are the people and firms gathering such information? What details are they putting together, how... »
As we noted in our previous post about personalised pricing, at the moment it’s thought that businesses are only just beginning to experiment with individualised pricing based on analysis of their customers personal data. But at the moment no-one knows a great deal about what exactly is happening. In November 2012 the UK’s Office of Fair Trading issued a “call for information” asking businesses to... »
