Personal data markets

What is it about?

On every ordinary day, BlueKai transacts over 75 million online auctions for personal information.Footnote1 The company, which belongs to Oracle, says it owns 750 million user profiles of people who regularly surf the web, and it processes more than 30,000 attributes about these users. BlueKai claims to run the world’s largest third-party data market place, but it is just one player in a huge web of over a thousand firms that have established themselves in the business that some call “the new oil”: personal data. Personal data markets thrive, driving online companies’ valuation and fueling Internet economics. At the same time this data is not just an ordinary tradable asset. Personal data can be highly sensitive and revealing about a person’s identity; processing it is legally restricted by data protection and privacy laws. In many countries, privacy and the right to information self-determination are recognized as a human right. And even among major high-tech companies, privacy protection now starts to be recognized as essential. While in 1999 Sun founder Scott McNealy claimed that privacy is dead and we should get over it, 2015 saw Apple’s CEO Tim Cook say that “information can make the difference between life and death. If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money; we risk our way of life. Fortunately, technology gives us the tools to avoid these risks and it is my sincere hope that by using them and by working together, we will.”

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