

FDVT: PERSONAL DATA VALUATION TOOL FOR Facebook™ USERS





A recent report of the Interactive Advertising Bureau revealed that online advertising generated in 2016 $72.5B worth of revenue only in US, representing an increase of 21% with respect to 2015, which in turn exceeded 20% the revenue of 2014. A great advantage of online advertising over more traditional printed and TV advertising is its capability to target individuals with specialized advertisements tailored to their personal information. For instance the ad campaign planner from Facebook™ (Facebook™) allows defining an audience using more than 13 different attributes related to personal information of the end-user. Therefore, an online advertiser can launch a campaign targeting a well-defined audience based on personal information attributes, thus an important part of the Facebook™ business model is built up on top of the personal information of its subscribers. Although there are no doubts of the legality of the business model implemented by Facebook™ and other major players in the Internet, there are some actors raising the request of generating tools that let end-users knowing what is the actual value of their personal information. In other words, how much money Facebook™, Google, and other companies in the on-line advertising market make out of my personal information. Providing Internet users with simple and transparent tools that inform them of what is the value that their personal data generates is not only a civil society request, but a demand from governmental forces.



The goal of this project is to develop a tool that informs in real-time Internet end users regarding the economic value that the personal information associated to their browsing activity has generated. Due to the complexity of the problem we narrow down the scope of this tool to Facebook™ in this project, i.e., inform Facebook™ users in real time of the value that they are generating to Facebook™. We refer to this tool as Data Valuation Tool for Facebook™ Users (FDVT).