Tech

Your personal data is resold 376 times a day

We know that our staff are wandering around the web every day, but it’s hard to imagine how much. The latest ICCL study helps us quantify this. In Europe, our personal data is auctioned 376 times a day on average. The age, gender, location and digital fingerprints of the sites visited are the most sought after by advertisers.

purchase of personal data
Credits: Unsplash

It is difficult today not to be interested in the issue of personal data. It is increasingly rare not to be registered on any social network and, even if it is, the least of our activities on the Internet are monetizable by large companies. More often than not, it is difficult to know what this data becomes. However, we can say without going too far that most Internet users do not particularly want their own data to travel to Russia, to name only this country.

To put things into perspective, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) conducted a study of this increasingly lucrative market. The most impressive is undoubtedly the following figure. 376: this is the number of times our personal data is put up for auction every day. Moreover, the latter only concerns European Internet users. In the United States, this is almost doubled. Unsurprisingly, this massive amount of data ends up mostly in the hands of advertisers.

On the same subject: The Play Store finally details the personal data collected by apps

Every day, advertisers steal your personal data

The Interactive Advertising Bureau meanwhile wanted to determine exactly what type of data advertisers are most interested in. His investigation revealed in the first place age, gender, location and digital footprint of sites visited. This data is already enough to offer highly targeted advertisements, which are more likely to interest the Internet user who falls on it.

On the side of the biggest sellers, Google is, unsurprisingly, the first place on the podium. The Mountain View firm has no less than 4698 customers interested in this information, only in the United States. Just behind, we find, Xandr, a subsidiary of Microsoft. Note, however, that Amazon and Meta were not counted in this study, even though Meta resells so much personal data that the company does not know what happens to it.

Source : The Register

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *