How much is your personal health data worth?
The short answer: about $12.50.
The longer answer: This month Hearst, an old-school media company, bought Real Age, a web company, for what's reported to be about $100 million. You might recognize Real Age from the ads it's plastered all over the web (even sometimes here through Google ads) prompting people to take its health and lifestyle survey in order to determine their "real age." The results of this survey are then supposed to help point you in the direction of a healthier lifestyle, or at least, that's what that guy who wears scrubs on Oprah says. And after they've helped you lower your real age, what might all that lifestyle data be useful for? Yep, targeting ads and other products. According to a press release, Real Age has about 8 million users who have "opted in" to receive promotions and other communication from the company. And as the blog GetLuky pointed out, the self-reported health data that Real Age has collected about those 8 million people now belongs to Hearst. (Real Age's privacy policy is posted online, if you'd like to scan it. The policy is 2700 words long. Be sure to read the part where they claim the right to hold onto your data even if you delete it.)
So Real Age and its database of 8 million people sells for about $100 million -- that's approximately $12.50 per person. Now you know the going rate.
(via)
-Greg Dahlmann
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