Personal data markets

Abstract

On every ordinary day, BlueKai transacts over 75 million online auctions for personal information. The company, which belongs to Oracle, says it owns 750 million user profiles of people who regularly surf the web, and it processes more than 30,000 attributes about these users. BlueKai claims to run the world’s largest third-party data market place, but it is just one player in a huge web of over a thousand firms that have established themselves in the business that some call Bthe new oil^: personal data. Personal data markets thrive, driving online companies’ valuation and fueling Internet economics. At the same time this data is not just an ordinary tradable asset. Personal data can be highly sensitive and revealing about a person’s identity; processing it is legally restricted by data protection and privacy laws. In many countries, privacy and the right to information self-determination are recognized as a human right. And even among major high-tech companies, privacy protection now starts to be recognized as essential. While in 1999 Sun founder Scott McNealy claimed that privacy is dead and we should get over it, 2015 sawApple’s CEOTimCook say that Binformation can make the difference between life and death. If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money; we risk our way of life. Fortunately, technology gives us the tools to avoid these risks and it is my sincere hope that by using them and by working together, we will.^ This special issue is placed at the intersection of these seemingly opposing poles of privacy and personal data markets. What are the economic, technical, legal, and business challenges faced by business models of companies like BlueKai? And what about the legitimacy and ethicality of those business models? By presenting a series of papers from global industry players and high-profile academics, spanning rigorous empirical, theoretical and conceptual work, we attempt to provide insight into the complexities of personal data markets and ways to manage and protect privacy within those markets. We start with an industry perspective provided by Bjorn Roeber, Olaf Rehse, Robert Knorrek and Benjamin Thomsen of the Boston Consulting Group (Roeber et al. 2015). As one of world’s largest consulting houses, BCG has been watching the development of personal data markets closely. It recently predicted that the economic use of personal data can deliver up to EUR 330 billion in annual economic benefit to organizations in Europe alone by 2020. To understand whether people would be willing to participate in such markets despite privacy concerns the company surveyed 3000 European 1 OECD, 2013, Supporting Investment in Knowledge Capital, Growth and Innovation 2 https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/daasmarketing_gs/DSMKT/GUID418EDA59-1BD9-40F6-9D57-DD7C266555FF.htm#DSMKT3616 3 http://bluekai.com/audience-data-marketplace.php