How To Protect Your Privacy and Make Money

itwbennett writes "You have precious personal information; marketers are willing to pay good money for it; and now there are services to broker the deal. London-based Allow Ltd., for example, negotiates with marketers on your behalf and cuts you in on the deal. One Allow customer, Giles Sequeira, made a whopping $10 for letting a single credit card company know that he's in the market for new plastic. In the US, a company called Personal is starting a similar pay-for-data service, and you can hop on its waiting list now." Anyone selling bridges?

Comments

Protect Your Privacy

[iYk6]

How does this protect your privacy? It sounds more like selling your privacy.

Re:Protect Your Privacy

[causality]

When you visit somebodies web server, the information regarding that visit is not your personal property. If you don't want them to record and mine your activities on their website, don't visit that website. Get noscript and live on the internet that way

Thats like walking into a 7/11 and bitching because they're recording you without asking. Its like getting on public transit and bitching at the driver because there are passenger counters installed. Its like going to your local politician up in arms about the traffic counter installed on the road you take home. Frankly, I have no idea what personal data is supposed to mean in this context. You're visiting somebody else's domain. How is a record of that and what you do there, belong to you in any way shape or form?

It would be courteous of you to learn what browser tracking is, how it is performed, and what sorts of data can be gathered before deciding to speak about the subject. That would save me some time and Slashdot some bandwidth.

That the owner of a particular site knows my IP address visited that specific site is not the problem. In short, the problem is that there are multiple ways in which an organization can track your browsing across many different sites that said organization does not own.

This is not like complaining that the local 7/11 recorded my visit. This is more like the local 7/11 hiring someone to follow me around and record every store I visit.

Now that the very most basic bit of knowledge about this subject has been spoonfed to you, perhaps you could revise your position in light of this new information.

Re:What an amazing offer

[Auroch]

Considering I have never paid a late fee or interest on a credit card since college, please tell me how they do that. I always pay it off every two weeks and spend the rewards when I get X amount. How are they making money?

My real interest is because if this does make them money I will probably stop doing it. My biggest reason besides the rewards for doing this is to hurt these banks.

You mean, the fact that there is a hidden cost of using a credit card built into your daily life doesn't bother you? Of course, you don't see the price increase, the merchants build it in. Generally speaking, you can get a cash discounted price at a mom and pop store for simply paying debit or cash - because then they don't pay the CC company and the related merchant fees.

So, yeah, I guess just so long as you don't actually *see* the increased cost, it won't bother you. And for big-box stores, those prices are part-and-parcel of their merch, so abstaining from using a CC may not help you there ... but if you're okay promoting the practice, then keep on plastic-ing.