Why did people stop to value their privacy? A lot of internet users seem to be ok with giving away their personal data to third parties like Google or Facebook or everyone who’s interested. What are the economic reasons behind that?
1. Privacy has lost its value. The iron curtain fell almost twenty years ago. So in general the level of trust that people have towards the society might have increased. In turn a high level of trust makes people be generous with personal data.
2. The Trade-off is high. If I am ok to trade in my privacy with a company such as Google, I get back a lot of very good and “gratis” to use products. I can use Gmail, the search engine, the new Browser Chrome and it does not cost me any money, only my privacy that I disclose to those companies. That’s a good deal.
3. People are not aware of issues that arise from giving away personal data. Privacy and the problems that arise from disclosing it to third parties is a very complex issue. It is not easy to teach to people. You cannot make causal assumptions such as if you disclose your privacy to company XY, company XY will abuse it. So the cost of learning about privacy issues is much much higher than profit you from not caring about it. On top of that privacy issues are only appearing very rarely. From 100 people disclosing personal data only one will suffer.
4. Attention economical success needs private data. There has always been a conflict between disclosing personal data and building up a public reputation. In the time of an increasing number of microcelebrities an increasing number of people need to disclose their personal data.
What other reasons are there. Gotta get back to this…
