Telco CEO: Consumers Have 'Double Standards' Over Data Privacy (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Despite consumers continuing to criticize corporate attempts at monetising data, they are happily handing over data to major tech companies such as Facebook, according to the head of Telefonica Deutschland, Thorsten Dirks. Dirks argued that there is a double standard among consumers who 'scrutinize any attempt to make money off their data', while at the same time 'handing over data voluntarily to companies such as Google and Facebook.' These firms, he opined, are stealing away business across the very infrastructure that telcos have invested billions in. Calling for a wide debate around data privacy in Germany, Dirks said that he was looking into ways to make money from Telefonica Deutschland's huge store of customer data. One proposition was to leverage the anonymised data of its 44 million mobile subscribers' location and movements to support crowd and traffic control.

Comments

Re:Voluntarily

[TheRaven64]

I am aware that Google and FB use the data I provide.

You're probably a minority. Most people seem to have very little idea of what Google and Facebook do with their data and are often quite shocked when they learn. The most common reaction I've seen is for people to disbelieve because they think that what Google and Facebook are doing must be illegal.