Research on consumers’ protection in advantageous operation of big data brokers

Abstract

In the era of big data, the scale and market power of internet brokers companies have gotten the significant improvement. After accepting the information display, comparative evaluation and consumption recommendation in shopping, dining, tourism and other fields provided by big data brokers, consumers fully felt the qualitative leap in the efficiency of consumption behavior under the digital economy. But at the same time, when faced with the dominance of big data brokers, the traditional weak consumers do not really improve the ability of informed and rational decision-making. On the contrary, there is the possibility that big data brokers mislead the consumers and exploit the interests of consumers, and the overall market competition order also have the great risk of being destroyed by the anti-competitive behaviors of big data brokers. Regulators and legislators should begin to develop consumer protection strategies against the strong growth for big data brokers. That is, to establish a balance mechanism of consumer personal information control and data disclosure; to full play the regulatory role of competition policy; to build a legal system of big data regulation. These strategies together achieve the strict supervision to big data brokers, and to complete the legal protection of consumer welfare.