The Price of My Information

Via Facebook, I found a story in the online New York Times Magazine on the data mining Target does with the information it collects when we buy its products using a credit card, coupon, or anything else that identifies us as the purchaser.   Their data analysis is so good that they can determine, with a high level of confidence, whether a shopper is pregnant and when she is due.  According to the story, they were even determined that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did!

Similarly, Google's new privacy statement has raised concerns about how much information we, sometimes unconsciously, give to them.

I don't think these companies are doing anything illegal or even necessarily unethical.  We and they are participating in a business transaction; in effect, we sell all of this information about ourselves for the price of credit card rewards, coupons, e-mail, internet searching, online documents, other services and benefits, and even this blog.  If I want, I can simply stop participating in many of these transactions, as an article in Forbes suggests, by paying mostly (on only) in cash.

I am beginning to realize that I have not been sufficiently conscious of this transaction even though I have thoroughly participated in it.  I have not stopped to ask the question, "How much is my information worth?" Certainly I have implicitly decided its price, but is that the right price?  Does that price reflect its true value?  I am asking these questions now, and I am not sure what the answers will be.