Researchers: Mobile Users Will Trade Data For Fun and Profit

itwbennett writes: Even as mobile users become more security and privacy conscious, researchers and other mobile data collectors still to collect user data in order to build products and services. The question: How to get users to give up that data? Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology tested two incentives: gamification and micropayments. The test involved building a campus Wi-Fi coverage map using user data collected from student participants who either played a first-person shooter game or who were paid to complete certain tasks (e.g., taking photos). The game turned out to be a quick and efficient way to build the Wi-Fi coverage map. But data from the micropayments group was found to be "sometimes unreliable, and individuals were trying to trick the system into thinking they had accomplished tasks."

Comments

Duh. But correlary

[neminem]

I am absolutely willing to trade my personal data for fun and/or profit. I figure they'll get it anyway, might as well help them along if I can get something out of it. Only if what I have to trade is worth what I'm getting, though. My personal data is worth way more to an aggregator than it is to me, so I'm happy to sell it to them.

Generally speaking, though, all the *mobile* apps that try to help me sell that data, suck my phone's battery like a cheap robot hooker, and *that's* worth way more to me. So I don't bother with them, which is too bad. (I've tried a couple similar programs for PC use, too. Don't have to worry about battery in that context, of course, but I do have to worry that they won't sporadically bug out and totally go crazy eating all my cpu and/or ram, which they have, so not bothering with those, either.)

Just sticking to *passive* methods of selling my data (i.e. surveys) has been pretty lucrative, though. A little bit more time-consuming, and the data they're getting might not be quite as precise, but it won't interfere with the things I actually *want* to use my laptop and/or phone for.

Google Opinion Rewards

[Defenestrar]

I'm generally willing to answer survey questions for a fraction of the revenue. So Google Opinion Rewards and Nielsen's TV watching logs are generally ok with me. Market research which doesn't split the value of my opinions with me will generally (but not always) get short shrift. (Note that value doesn't have to be monetary, I'll often give opinions when I think there's a chance of influencing the item in a direction beneficial to me). Passive tracking options which don't give me an option to selectively participate/abstain are DOA as far as I'm concerned (like Verizon Rewards).

Been done

[LokiSteve]

Google calls it Ingress.

Correction

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

*some mobile users will trade data for fun and profit. But not me.