[MyData & Open Data] we have a price: 11KEUR/personal medical data

Sun May 4 10:52:54 UTC 2014

Hi Lancelot, 

Thanks for your excellent points. 

On 3 May 2014, at 16:03, Lancelot PECQUET (Will Strategy) <lpecquet at willstrategy.com> wrote:

> Hi Mark,
> 
> We know that there are wholesale markets (and therefore market price) of personal 
> data out there.
> 
> Personal data has mostly been used as a commodity so far (and priced as such, i.e. low),
> e.g. for "basic" targeted advertizing but it is *not* a commodity as soon as organizations
> are able to extract more value from it.
> 
> Suppose that an insurance company gets full access to the personal data
> of its clients. This company can update its risk model, terminate the contracts 
> of people with risky profiles (or outrageously increase their price) and offer the 
> best price to the "good clients" (whose probability of having an accident or a
> disease is low). 

In this scenario it appears that insurance companies either illegally get access to personal data, or are in need of regulation.  

> 
> Considering this would provide a very strong competitive advantage + very high profit,
> how much would this company be willing to pay for this dataset? I would say more 
> than $0.26 per client (as suggests FT's calculator).
> 
> Regarding the toothpaste metaphor, I would not push it as far as you : some personal 
> data remain "valuable" for a long period of time (i.e. as long as you are
> alive and possibly after if the data also concerns your relatives).

Yes, there is the sensitive personal information (health data), which is protected in every jurisdiction with privacy legislation.  If insurance companies use this to increase premiums illegally, they are and I believe will be liable for this in the future. 

> 
> For instance, once the insurance company has learned its client has diabetes, it can 
> use this piece of information (and all other data that suggest an evolution of his/her health 
> condition) to discriminate him/her (and relatives of course : if an immediate relative - 
> parent, brother, sister, son or daughter - has type 1 diabetes, one's risk of developing 
> type 1 diabetes is 10 to 20 times the risk of the general population).
> 

Again, transparency over the data insurance companies use, via subject access requests and the like, will make insurance companies liable.  

> As long as people still believe their personal data has little value and that there is no need
> to worry about because they have "nothing to hide", data is being collected silently, 
> and irreversibly.

I am not sure people think their data has little value, again, I think it depends on context.  I would think that people are deceived by the services they use into providing data. In fact, the existing law is suppose to protect people from such things and their is still some trust in the market. 

In another sense, people often lie and change their data or mis represent their data online to insulate against such things.  I can imagine a future where their are certified data sets, in that people themselves self assert data is correct, and where people dispute or make illegitimate data that they do not approve of. 

It is not so difficult to make fake data about ones self.    I would say that the perception that my data is out there and that it is too late is wrong, the thought that there is nothing I can do about it,  is a bit of misnomer.

There are things we can do about it. 

Kind Regards, 

Mark 

> 
> L
> 
> 
> 
> Le 03/05/2014 11:33, Mark L a écrit :
>> Hi Lancelot. 
>> 
>> Thanks for putting forward the misleading nature of this.   Personal data is inevitable much more value in the personal sense and in that regard more valuable to some people I know rather than some people who don’t care about me at all.  This is a socio-political issues, in that depending on where you are on the pecking order in your various social strata depends on who your personal data is valuable too and why.  
>> 
>> The fact that some corporation will buy this data wholesale for little or great value is a non-sequitor.   
>> 
>> As that saying goes : 
>> After the tooth paste is out of the tube it gets old really quick and very soon gets hard and unusable.  Same thing with personal data.  What is valuable to the corporations is the intention data, the predictive data.  So far we are still in control of our choices. 
>> 
>> We also can make our data is always to old or expensive to maintain on purpose, to keep that corporate data value low, with very little effort by altering it just a a little.   So, wether we can pull our data back or not is just the tip of the issue at the moment. 
>> 
>> In my opinion, the lower the monitory value the higher the personal value to the individual.   
>> 
>> - Mark 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2 May 2014, at 21:31, Lancelot PECQUET (Will Strategy) <lpecquet at willstrategy.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Well, as Steph said a few weeks ago if I remember correctly: "once the toothpaste 
>>> is out, you cannot put it back".
>> 
> 

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