I just read a piece in The Guardian – Facebook and Google may be forced to ask permission to use personal data – which discusses recent EU proposals about forcing companies to ask permission from users before utilising user data for advertising purposes.
“Users must be informed about what happens with their data,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German member of the European parliament who is driving the reform. “And they must be able to consciously agree to data processing – or reject it.”
Personally I would love to tell these companies what they can do with my data, but at the same time I’m not naïve.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on and so on – if they were no longer able to make money from your personal data then there is no longer an incentive for them to give you a free service.
The simple answer
These companies just need to work out the average worth of their users’ data and offer a paid version of their service where that personal data is no longer used to generate advertising revenues.
Obviously there’s a bit more to it than that as the personal data en masse presumably offers extra metrics and information.
Present the above screen to your users and it would be interesting to see how many people are willing to give away their personal data. How many would put their money where their mouth is?
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