Slashdot Mirror
Weighing the Value of Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "A new study from HP Labs shows that the reluctance of individuals to reveal private information (or how much money they would demand to do so), depends on how far they perceive themselves to be from the norm. For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight. From the article: 'How and why people decide to transition their information from the private to the public sphere is poorly understood. To address this puzzle, we conducted a reverse second-price auction to identify the monetary value of private information to individuals and how that value is set. Our results demonstrate that deviance, whether perceived or actual, from the group's average asymmetrically impacts the price demanded to reveal private information.'"
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
Why? It's not like your friends can't see that you are fat.
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Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Haven't you read Why Speculate yet?
"My topic for today is the prevalence of speculation in media. What does it mean? Why has it become so ubiquitous? Should we do something about it? If so, what? And why? Should we care at all? Isn't speculation valuable? Isn't it natural? And so on."
They did, but their results deviated so much from the norm expected that they were hesitant to release their results. :^P
I don't think I'll bother going through the PDF to see how they avoided introducing bias in their subject selection process and testing.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Does this mean that based on this study anti-privacy activists (how else to call them) will start saying that "as shown by studies, if you don't want to share your private information, thoughts
/. intro:
..to identify the monetary value of private information to individuals..f
I don't think they need a justification for that. But Judging from what it says in the
They will now be able to calculate exactly how much money they have saved by poking their noses into our private thoughts and information without our permission.
MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
Uhummm...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Ah this reminds me of a company I used to work for which paid a consulting group for an online study (survey and analysis) to gauge what our audience was. This gave us a nice set of statistics and pretty report which really just told us the demographics of people with the time and inclination to fill out long online survey forms and devulge personal information for the chance to win a small prize. No telling marketing that ofcourse.
Beyond Concern: Understanding Net Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
The bids are sealed in the second-highest auction, unlike eBay. Makes a big difference.
Try to use love to buy a house in the suburbs, or privacy to get three meals a day. Until you can to this, people will always be trading their lives and health for money (a.k.a. going to work).
That old fascist saw about "not having anything to worry about as long as you don't have anything to hide" is true?
If that's the case, our Founding Fathers must have been absolute perverted freaks.
One more reason to idolize them!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yup. Email me offline if you like; I'd be interested in further discourse.
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the elephants are untrained.