IT IS one of the biggest scandals of the past decade, and yet ongoing revelations about surveillance by the US National Security Agency have yet to fundamentally affect the way we choose to handle our personal data. Search engines that do not log user searches as Google does (such as DuckDuckGo) have seen a surge in traffic. But they still handle only a tiny proportion of web searches.

Why don’t people seem to care? One important reason is that very few of us really understand, let alone control, the vast, intangible and invisible data trail we leave behind as we navigate the digital world. Perversely, internet companies and government agencies often understand what we’re giving up better than we do.

Now technical fixes are starting to arrive to help us gain control over this trail. OpenPDS, for example, is a repository that alerts consumers to data requests from companies or intelligence agencies (see “Private data gatekeeper stands between you and the NSA“).

Such solutions are helpful to those who are privacy-conscious and tech-savvy enough to use them. Even if they become easy to use, however, people may still consider that the exchange of data for services such as social media and email is a good deal. But do the users of these services really understand what they have given up? Consumers have largely sleepwalked into giving their data away. Perhaps the status quo is OK, but it has not yet been subject to a proper public debate.


Netizens might become more interested in that debate if the value of their data was more widely appreciated. It is a valuable resource – and not just to advertisers, snoops and spooks. The data can be used to improve public services such as transport, and promises to transform the social sciences with an unprecedented flood of information about how people go about their daily lives.

One of the obstacles in running these analyses is gathering the data itself, because it is jealously guarded by the communications companies that provide us with services. Even if we don’t really care about the privacy of our personal data, we should still care who owns it.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Time to get personal over data”