Greg Avery reports:
Most smartphone users value their privacy enough to pay extra to have software applications keep their personal information private, a new study shows. In fact, some are willing to pay as much as $5 to prevent apps from sharing their location.
Read more on Puget Sound Business Journal.
After reading the article, I thought “Wonderful! Now they can start charging us extra to not abuse our privacy. This is worse than charging extra for ‘shipping and handling’ when neither is optional. At least with shipping and handling we’re being charged for something we don’t have which the vendor is providing. This would be more like our banks charging us extra for ‘identity theft protection’ when it’s their duty to not grant credit in our names without being sure they’re granting it to us instead of to some criminal.”
But after thinking about it, I now believe that establishing a market value for privacy might be a good thing.
First of all, it might encourage vendors to serve their customers instead of the ad-surveillance crowd if the price is right. Right now, our privacy is being taken from us with no real options other than to stay out of the market. I realize that threatening to abuse our privacy unless paid not to is almost like extortion, but the bank/identity theft model shows that it’s legally acceptable.
Second, if a legitimate economic price for respected privacy (no matter how puny) becomes well established and legally accepted, then economic losses from abused privacy are quantifiable and suitable for aggregation by privacy rights lawyers in class action lawsuits. Currently the courts seem to only respect economic rights not privacy rights.