Topic: for anyone interested in how much their personal data is worth (Read 600 times)

Lol we are being sold for dirt cheap while still holding a valuation that's huge compared to those who don't exist for these data collectors because they collect this data for the sole purpose of throwing their ads in front of us, letting them make hefty commissions out of our purchases. Data business is the world's biggest business and those who speak about privacy, I bet 99% of them don't even know that they're already known to various companies who are targeting them to sell their products, services and even ask for donations (NGOs).

I doubt service providers give out clients phone numbers just for the sake of it. Perhaps they could do so when court ordered or a request from law enforcement.
As to how we get spammy texts, there are a lot of ways which our phone numbers could be compromised. Most times, we’re the one unknowingly or knowingly spreading our numbers all over for whoever interested to pick up. With the number of social media app and dating sites out there that’s being registered on, that also requires phone numbers for registration, it shouldn’t be surprising when we receive spammy texts.

It's obvious they are making a whooping profit from the data's they get or buy from both people that are willing to sell and those they manipulate if not I see no reason what they will be spending money to pay for something that's without value to them.

About the promotional SMS you are right, there was a time I had to put a call through to one of the network service provider I am using to lay a complaint due to the excessive promotional SMS I have been receiving and all they could reply me was that if the messages ain't important to me I should ignore each time I receive any. And it's so annoying that I still receive them to this date. That was how I got an eye-opener that it's all a collaborative business.

I highly doubt that this is true. If this were really true, then journalists would have dug into that and revealed scary truth. Maybe there are phone number dumps, but they arent in bulk and companies try to hide that. Like companies have millions of customers, and some unfair employees sell few thousands numbers on dark market. It is us who treats our privacy irresponsibly. We do have same phone number for tens years and use it everywhere. We are the one who form those personal data bases primary.

Even if that doesn't pose any risk for us or our families, the survey companies that collect personal information from us by either paying us or making promises to give us rewards and money, sell these data to other companies that pay them way more than what they pay us for the information. That is the reason why these survey companies strive to get as much information as they can because they know it's extremely valuable.

Have you ever wondered why and how we get SMS promotional messages from time to time on our personal phone numbers when we don't give our numbers to anyone? It's because the GSM companies that we get our numbers from sell these data to companies that advertise their products and services through it.

The data's are given too low money value so that we don't see it as anything important as people are claiming it to be. I see a lots of data survey companies offering between less than $1-$5 for different degrees of informations about the person and people don't care to know why they will be paying to get their data's if it's not that important.

 The data's we don't care about today in exchange for $10  can be used against us and family in the future that can cost us competitive positions in the society and other things when they get sold into the hands of a rival. People should learn to protect themselves for the future since it's unknown if what will be.

What kind of data do these companies have about an individual? Their browsing behavior, interest, hobby, age, sex, status, etc. They don't have your wallet's private key or your ATM pin number. The scary thing that can happen to you is that you will frequently see some annoying ads or a call from a scammer who is offering you the next dot-com share because he thinks it's your lucky day.

Our data is invaluable to us, and this value depends on which region of the world you are living in. Individual data from any southeast asian country isn't that valuable, and most people from this part of the world actually don't care about it.

All those "free" stuff are actually not free and you are the product. That has always been the case, if you are given something free to use, then you are the product they sell. Places like facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter all uses you as their product to sell to their customers, the real customers, who are the ad companies.

And I can tell you easily that we are going to end up with a lot of trouble in the future with our data. There are big global brands in the social media that has more information about you than even your government has, and that is going to cause a lot of trouble with power balance, imagine a social media being able to control the public more than a government can, wouldn2t that pose a threat?

That is interesting but most people doesnt really care about their personal data just completely selling it or giving it to companies without even having doubt about it, It is really difficult to protect our personal data these days because big blue chip companies are probably the ones who is selling our personal data we just dont know about it, but personally, it's going to be a different story when we are talking about the KYC data since it can already be used in some scams or identity thief. So I am already cautious when I give my KYC, I only give it to legitimate websites that are already trusted by a lot of people, but even that even big platforms are getting hacked and leaking people's personal data.

so about 0.11$ with a few billion users could easily be a big amount of money for sure, we sure are talking about millions of pesos selling personal data, but I guess this wasn't just a single pay since probably they are going to sell those to a lot of companies where they would get a lot of traffic as per advertising or promoting thing right. The scary thing here is when you actually do a KYC and these days loaning thing is probably a big business with probably only 1 ID you could already loan a fair amount of money which probably going to happen when they leak your ID.

The moment we engaged with online activities, it is where we are already exposed with risks concerning our personal information to it. Not to mention those malwares which would enforce accessing those informations to make use of it in accordance with their purpose.However this imposes risk to all of us and we are all prone to its leakage.

VPN also won’t be enough to stop the risk of leaking our personal informations ‘coz there are platforms we are accessing which included personal information on their policy and  that they’re ones who would decide where would they use it; to good or bad intentions.

Yes, this is the bitter truth of life. All the laws on personal data protection do not work, because they were written by those who collect such data. There are many inconsistencies and loopholes in these laws. Therefore, there is practically no chance to keep the data out of the eyes of others

As long as you are using the internet and accessing any website or service or platform, there is absolutely no way for you to prevent your data from being shared because you can't keep using a VPN your whole life and some platforms don't even allow that. You also can't stop using some platforms that might be important for you, you might have clients or do work at a certain platform and if you use a VPN, you can access it, so you don't have a choice in that case.

They got tactics they use to collect our data and we don't even realize it, even the clicks that we do, the searches we make on any platform including Google, the messages we send between each other, almost each and everything is recorded and sold to companies for some purpose and we are the victims of that.

This type of claims are sometimes funny to me, because today you can generate fake address and IDs online or using software, so how will a scammer using a fake information hurts you? Faces and fingerprints are the most important things online this days, even romance scammers are using someone else identity to carry out fishing acts on their victims, what has this done to the real people whom identity was used to fraud other people? Nothing, because it's not really them.

If someone's identity was stolen, and they use the identity to make illegal transactions, it can be instantly known that the identity was stolen, unless face ID and fingerprints are involved, this is not 1999 it's 2023 for God's sake, things are now more advanced than they used to.

Authorities aren't stupid, some fishing and romance scams are revealed in the US where the stolen identity was borough live on a program, he turned to joke because it's funny how people believe that someone is really who they claimed to be while you haven't done any live videos or video callings with them.

That is a very interesting table, I had no idea our personal information would be so cheap. Somehow, I always thought it would be more expensive to get specific data for individuals like income, age, ethnicity, etc. Given that my salary is much lower and I am already older than 20, I feel a bit cheap that my personal information is not worth more. It kind of makes sense that value of the information is linked to the personal income of a person. But still paying only 1.3 USD for the information of someone that makes 130k a year seems a bit off. Such a high earner has a lot of disposal income and with the right advertising there could be a lot of money be made. The question would be now if it's so easy to acquire a lot of personal information online and that is why companies don't have to pay more for our data. Or most companies still rely on generic advertising and don't use all the personal information. Another thing is that among my friends it's mostly woman that order online, which would make personal information of woman more valuable than men.

Leak data is the scariest thing done to your personal data because someone exploits their database just to get it or even accidentally finds it and if you are lucky that the white hat hacker done it he will just report itif not it goes directly to the dark web where a lot of people will be buying it at a cheap price and those bank customers are not aware that their identity was already sold and we don't know where it was used. What's worse is that you thought that the bank's online security was good but it turns out that it was not which it is difficult to trust online security right now.

Makes clear sense when someone is working on the micro-tasking site. They also segregate the task publishers into Tier 1, 2, and 3 countries. As anyone would guess, Tier 1 is nothing but highly developed countries like Europe, and the USA while the rest of the world follows behind it.

If someone is doing a KYC-related task then a Tier 3 country would have let us say $ 0.20 payout. However, if the same task is being done by a Tier 1 country then the difference is as much as $2 making it 10 times more valuable.

Based on this assumption demographic data is far more valuable than anything else. Even the survey providers follow the same strategy and pay their users likewise. I think what is being represented in the OP falls to correct reality which is both sad and unwanted at the same time. It's personal data, it's better be secure.

Individual data is almost worthless if you think it that way. According to the data, mine should be $0.51. That's not much, but if you combine many and use them in order to target them, then the price would be unimaginable. Many companies collect data in order to target individuals to send advertising so that they can profit from it. Our data is not worth anything to us, but if you think about what it could do then it will be priceless. This is why privacy should be our first priority.

They play with our minds because they can. And it is possible because we gave access to your personal data to them. There are people who still think that there is no such thing as privacy. They never bother to keep their data safe. Those are the people who will get hit hard the most.

It was already known to all of us that our personal data was not protected but the fact that this data was used and priced in certain categories meant that we were in a less secure environment than we expected. Especially in this period when there are many free applications, of course, application developers also sell this data in order to generate income. For this reason, we understand that we need to be more sensitive about the applications we use and the information we provide to these applications.

Although it is not included in this attachment we can be sure that this data is grouped in more detail and many businesses can reach potential customers more easily with higher fees. Who knows how many different classifications are made in this way, including our own data.

There are search engines which claim not to sell or record your data, search history and other methods to build up virtual profiles on yourself online to sell.  Duckduckgo is the biggest one I know of but must be others, I guess they just aim to sell general advertising and privacy is probably quite important motivation to many especially on health and finance concerns to search on.
  The flip side would be signing up for points and gaining something on every search, I think Microsoft is probably most generous on that.   Some kind of daily questionnaire I think they sponsor some points and in time reward for regularly using their products, search engine and browser.   I mostly use them to check spelling, I dont mind if they record my bad spelling really its pretty random.

  Facebook is well known to be one of the biggest, most profitable enterprises and they for sure sell data on people and yet most of that data is submitted voluntarily.  I avoid using real accurate data unless I have to.  I should get a source & I will look but Ive read prior that apparently they at times have used voice recognition to search your voice for commercial data records (mostly to retail or advertising) where possible, I can believe that though it seems extreme.   Test it if you like, say a specific brand name you never use or like (that has a big budget) and see if that advert pops up later.

  US gov said recently Google is spending over a billion to advance its own search engine    Again surprising they need to do so -  https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/09/12/us-says-google-pays-10bn-a-year-to-maintain-search-dominance/

It sucks getting your data sold online but there are a few things you can do to limit it. Try to use strong unique passwords, enable two factor authentication, keep devices & software updated. Limit personal information shared online, get a reputable VPN for encrypted internet traffic. Try to remember to review & adjust privacy settings. Even something as simple as not clicking on suspicious links or downloading unknown files can help. Always use reputable antivirus software & keep it updated.

I think this data is very interesting. And this reminds me of several cases of leaks of customer data information from several banks in my country, where customer data was then bought and sold on dark sites at prices that, if calculated, were not much different from those described by the OP. However, a person's data is very important. This is what makes it valuable. Maybe we see the price per unit which looks very cheap. But not. It's not about the unit but about the targeted group. So the price is actually quite high. And there are many things that can be done with that data set. Business marketing interests and other things.

Interesting to see this. I have no idea where I was labelled as a Turkish person but I feel it's going to be somewhere closer to what my economic situation is, not where I am from and considering that's horrible I guess it's not really doing that well lol. I did assume that data is a big thing that combines a bunch of us together, its just a statistic at that point and a single person rarely ever worth anything. The scariest part is that it's common, I knew of a company that keeps buying, so I know how cheap it is, it could cost as little past 100 dollars to get 10k people's phone numbers along with their names, last names, and where they live. Thats a scary thing when you think about it.

That is definitely true, I once saw a company (my mom worked there) who bought some huge phone number list from a company and they paid like 7.5k dollars for it, it was a huge list and then they made all their workers end up calling them up and make a sale to them as well. That was definitely not a good way but did they made a profit? Give or take they did.

This is why it was so important to pay for that list but if you are a person on that list that was annoying as hell, they would call you to sell something different every week and the more they sell the more they made a profit as well. I believe that's going to be the issue and we should not really be considering that as a good thing for people who have their information leaked.

Wait, I think it's not that kind of data, it's not our personal data, not like phone number, home address, email address, .etc. I think it's the data that website and social media can get and sell it legally, like our preference of food, or entertainment, so it might be used for targeted ads, not like for hacking or such, or am I wrong?

I always thought that because I am very not important person, no one want to stole or collect my data, but I never that my data would be so worthless. I mean it should at least be $1, company can make at least ten times the money if they send me the right ads. lol.

Disappointing and very surprising, indeed. I would've thought that my data would be much more expensive, but it seems ridiculous after looking into the OP's table. Their collective value for the companies who buy and sell them is huge, but the particular value per individual is negligible.

Who else, apart from me, would be willing to pay so that personal data are not sold? I could pay a few hundred dollars for a few whims, so paying to safeguard privacy wouldn't be that mad. But there are two problems with that, at least: 1) it is not fair to be obliged to pay to protect personal data that shouldn't be marketable in the first place, and 2) even if you paid, no one guarantees that your data wouldn't be sold anymore.

I don't why you say do not worth much but actually those data is what companies and scammers needed since they can use that on any studies or for scammers to crimes they want to do. That's the reason why we need to be more careful handling our personal data so that we cannot leak it anywhere. To bad for us if we give it unconsciously to criminals since expect to get a lot of problems or spam messages coming from them since they might attempt to compromise us especially if they see that we are a big catch for them.

And that is the thing, while our personal information is not worth much to the companies that want to acquire our data, that information is invaluable to us, because if it ends up on the wrong hands this can bring us a lot of trouble down the line, unfortunately we do not have too much of a choice, as in this day and age it is indispensable to carry a smartphone with you, and as we know those devices are always leaking our information in one way or another.

It's true, we're not really losing our personal data it's just that others are able to have them, meaning it will not be exclusive for us to use. It is not new knowledge that companies use our data for their growth, I mean we are all aware of it and sometimes even volunteer to do it when we choose to answer survey forms and customer service feedback. However, the actual harm and scary thing is when someone like a fraud gets a hand on your personal data and uses it on illegal transactions. There are a lot of instances when other people's identities were used to do illegal transactions without them even knowing that someone else was able to have access to their personal data, the next thing they know they have authorities hunting them down. It is cases like these that makes people scared regarding topics like this.

Nah, you're not lossing your personal data, but it will be shared and sold to anyone who's interested instead.
Most probably fraudsters and companies who's looking for a lead to sell their products are the ones interested in these personal data. Fraudster may use it to manipulate you or the others for their personal gain. Companies may use these information to find leads and potential sales.
These issue we are all aware of but tend to be overlooked as if it may not cause any trouble in the future, this explains why bounty hunters aren't afraid to put their personal info in the internet.

Well, it's understandable that they collect information through these forms so that they can sell them, but based on the data provided in the OP, one identity costs less than a dollar in most cases, maybe about a few dollars in rare cases, and if they are paying $10 to one person for filling their personal information, I don't see how they will get any benefit from that. So they will sell the data to multiple companies one by one and then earn a profit on that? I see!

However, people that fill those forms are actually needy of money, they can do almost anything to get at least some money and these data collectors and sellers make use of such opportunities because they know they can find a lot of people that care more about money than their data being sold.

On dark Web you can find any type of data by paying in Bitcoin. You can even find credit cards numbers there. Whatever info we provide digitally is subject to hack and is stolen very often. Though we can't avoid this risk of digital robbery but we reduce its impact by not storing our sensitive info digitally. As long as we provide our credentials to online retailers we are exposing ourselves to online hacking.

We really have to protect our privacy data, currently in my country there will be an election soon but there are already several people who are busy collecting the personal data of prospective voters, they also promise that anyone who is willing to provide their ID card privacy data will be given $3.

There is also news that I heard in one area, people were obliged to pay debts even though they had never had any debts from online loans, it is suspected that this happened due to a leak of personal data. Our personal data is now much more valuable than gold, it is very important to protect it.

thats just data of [email][name][age][ethnicity][income]

if data brokers knew more about you and a particular company wanted to know you specifically due to other things the price goes up
EG as said before if your hobbies, interests and consumer purchasing history met a companies product promotion. your data could be worth more

there are many data brokers that would buy
[name][email] for $0.01 from a email provider or some service you signed upto
then if they get for instance from netflix
[email][sci-fi genre] for $0.01
by ising email as a ID reference they can link name to netflix preferences. and those three datapoints
[name][email][sci-fi genre] is no longer worth $0.02 combined. but instead could be worth $0.10 to a company selling sci-fi merchandise that is priced at $100+
if the data broker found more data like
[email][age] for $0.01 from a age verifications service

then the 4 datapoints of
[name][email][sci-fi genre][age] is no longer worth $0.03. but instead could be worth $0.20 to a company selling sci-fi merchandise that is priced at $100+
same named person. same promotional merch company but the data is worth now they specifically kno w your in the age demography of people more likely to buy merchandise

if for instance your netflix viewing history shows you thumbs up and favour car modification, restoration or specific car dealership documentaries
the data can be worth many dollars to car dealerships for just
[name][email][car genre][age]
compared to similar data from netflix of
[name][email][sci-fi genre][age]

There is an expression that if you don't pay, then you are the product yourself. It means that if you use a free service, then it shows you ads, and so the creator of the service earns. Even the best example would be a free VPN. It would seem - what is the point of someone to make a free VPN service so that everyone uses it?
In fact, it absorbs all the traffic that comes from the user. And then collected these databases, as the author of the topic showed. We live in the age of Big Data, where information is collected even where it would seem it would not make sense. Therefore, you should not leave information about yourself on the Internet once again.

So, it is really too low? I thought there is a catch with it like when they say per data it doesn't mean the total value when we submit our KYC. I still think that our data's are too worthy so I wouldn't sell them easily but maybe if the offer is pretty huge like a thousand or more dollars, I might think of it.

Sometimes we need to be practical in order to survived. No wonder why a lot of people are also doing the same, and most of it are from your country. In which country your are living by the way? But, that country must be a poor one and people hardly have no choice but to sell almost anything they have in order to survived. 10 dollars in exchange for their data was indeed too small though. Last time there is also a project called World Coin which have the same intention but you will only need to scan your eyes and you will be paid by a token after.

not quite
data provided to a business is supposed to be protected IF that is the terms and conditions of the contract/agreement/policy/you have with that business.. but the business can also have term to allow them to share data
they consider personal data. anything that can be found publicly. like what school you went to, age, marriage status, gender, hobbies, home address, telephone, email.
there is private data too like medical data and bank data.
however even private data can be shared with consent

for instance your bank card number is not only shared with the card processor, but the retailer first and the actual bank.

your bank statement can be shared too.. authorities, tax reporting. and even retail businesses. especially if u sign up to them "cashback" offers on your account. the retailers get your details and offer you cashback.



its the average just for demographic basic data.. there are added premiums if the data concerning you also includes things specific to the industry buying the data.. EG if you are vegan then vegetable selling businesses would pay extra for a database of people that are known to be vegan

the prices in the topic first post are just basic starting prices for the most basic of data.
companies add premiums for lots of things ontop. like emails of certain people of certain wage/age plus:
-those living in towns their stores are located.
-specific interest of specific product/service
-employment of certain type
-size of family/house
-type of vehicle

the list goes on, and unmeasurable because of how custom each dataset may become.
but for instance someone owning a 10yo lambo who has a wealthy income is priceless data to car dealerships. so they can pay upto $10-$100 for the right custom dataset per user

You unfortunately have no idea how much information about you "walks around" without the "darknet" and similar sellers.
I have said many times - in today's world there is no privacy ! If we are talking about data such as full name, passport number, cell phone number, e-mail, insurance number, residential address, etc.  All these data can be obtained either directly (contact information in bank, hospital,...) or indirectly (e.g. find out from pizza delivery service if you ordered pizza, etc. ways).
These conditionally private data actually exist in dozens and hundreds of systems with access possibilities - from a pizza delivery person to a bank employee !

The question is actually 2:
1. Do you really consider such data to be private and such that can cause harm ?
2. Are you not mistaken in your assessment of data privacy ? For example, I consider as private data such data that can not be used in public services and if it gets into the wrong hands can cause me real harm, losses, problems. This is my account data, CVV-code of cards, health data, private wallet keys, code for key recovery, .....

Exactly.

And you cannot retrieve your data if it becomes more valuable in the future, you jus have to live with the consequences of the decisions you make now. Plus it costs $0 to actually protect your data.

Exactly, it is not fully about how much it costs, it's how your private data is losing the actual privacy. Often times people may not see the importance of keeping personal information in private but it should always be remembered that once your data is out there it can be accessed and used by anyone for anything even for illegal transactions which can lead to authority's knocking on your door.

You should value it based on the effect of losing all privacy and not what your individual data costs and many people are not aware what their data actually costs, they just do not take any effort whatsoever to protect it cause they do not consider it anything that can cost them any real danger.

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I will like to know if this valuation is how much different companies value our data or how much it is sold on the dark web.

What you can expect the personal data should be expensive? even we know any people personal information, we can't do anything except if you're become a robbery. Nowadays centralized exchanges ask for selfie, video or even biometric verification, so you can't impersonating someone using their personal data only.

However even personal data is worth really cheap, that's not mean our personal data is cheap too, if someone never share his personal data to any site, their personal data worth unlimited.

Like anything the value of something is determined by its supply and demand, the demand for more data could make us believe that our personal information should be worth a fortune, however the supply of data is enormous as well, not only because of leaks and hacks, but each smartphone is more advanced than the previous one and it can generate a massive amount of data about you the more you use it, so I think it is natural the information of a single person is worth so little.

Mine is just around $0.27. So cheap indeed. I'm a little bit surprised this is how cheap our data are. That's probably one of the reasons why they're being sold in bulk. Otherwise, it isn't good money. But despite how cheap they are, they translate into millions, even billions, when utilized by companies all over the world. But it's probably more worrisome if these data are much more expensive. There'd be more data miners willing to disrespect privacy for money.

is this standardized? The fact that it's this cheap makes it even less encouraging for people to protect their data, since after all it's dirt cheap!

In my opinion (and I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist as much as possible but it's just so preposterously cheap for me) these journals are hiding something from us, perhaps keeping the fact that Data could go for even more expensive in the market, after all, from a single behavioral data set a company could make millions with it already. Plus we have companies who advertise services where "you can monetize your own data", how does that go for in the grand scheme of things?

We can't deny the fact that no matter how we protect our personal data, there will still be companies who will steal it from different cookies and sell them at a cheaper price regardless of how it may affect us. We have no choice since we are always complying with KYCs nowadays and we are always providing our personal details to different institutions both local and international. It will be easier for companies to find data resources that they could buy and sell at a higher price.
In the latest technology that we have nowadays, we should expect that this identity theft will surely happen in the name of money so the best that we can do is just to protect our personal data the best way that we can do. Data protection isn't that strict right now, so we can always expect data selling anywhere and this has been already over the black market industry for over the years.

It's interesting to see these numbers and I'm guessing that they correlate to how much money they can make from marketing towards you. I guess the fact that many middle easterners (at least in places like Saudi and the UAE) receive an income from their government and have vast amounts of disposable cash it what contributes towards that, maybe religion plays a part in it as well. I might have expected the white demographic to be higher placed, but there are quite a few in that group so the pricing can range a large amount depending on geography and the demographic. In general you might find specific peoples are worth much more, so these are very broad averages taking into account the large poorest groups.

The data of us was readily available now a days,So the worth of the data was not high now.But if you sell the data with the video verification,the data had high value.The reason for the fall in the data price is due the middle man,who sell the available personal data at very cheap.Many people selling the KYC of the developed countries at the value of 10-20 dollars.The middle man use to get data from the hackers from the government website,where the data are readily available of their citizens.The sale of KYC was the big business in the crypto industry now.

If you look at it realistically, personal data, especially when it comes to a middle-income person, is an invaluable treasure trove of information for marketing agencies. Unfortunately, due to constant leaks, despite various laws, our personal data is virtually worthless today

Kind of disappointing numbers for those who were making plans on how to live on selling their data to some companies!

I never understood why some thought that their internet usage behavior was worth that much, when you're on a budget and 10 cents in price difference is enough to change your buying habits why would a company pay even one cent for it? I did make a few of my friends angry when I asked them calmly and smiling, who the hell do you think you are that your data would be worth more than $10 bucks when that's all the money you have in your pocket?

Companies need to make a profit, if they would pay millions just to find out that the one thousand guys they get all the info on them have little or no intention of buying or using any of their products how would that work out?

Besides, I don't understand this fear of company x knowing I'm interested in product y?
So, what are they going to do show me add of product Z and I'm going to act like a moron and buy it just because I saw an ad?


A perfect example of how somebody making the minimum wage should not be that concerned Bentley Motors Limited has acquired his browing data habits. 

At this point I don't believe anything said by a company, institution or government regarding data protection for users because it is bullshit. Even now, user data is still widely traded in online forums and usually the data is still fresh, which means it has just been hacked or sold by irresponsible parties.
Indeed, this is the risk for us as users, of course our identity, activities and various data about us are valuable and are very vulnerable to being traded, and we as users cannot do anything about this.

For advertising companies, detailed data such as KYC is actually not that important. All they do is capture data/history of your interaction while connected to the internet via cookies. It doesn't violate any privacy rules at all

Maybe such detailed data is a bit expensive in different markets like the dark web.

In my opinion, it depends on the data buyer's needs. In the realm of the internet, data transactions are closely tied to the advertising industry, which we often encounter on blogs, social media, marketplaces, and elsewhere. Targeted advertising yields a higher conversion rate compared to non-targeted ads.

Professionals like doctors, engineers, or individuals in various occupations certainly possess data of different qualities compared to the average person. In the field of medicine, for instance, there's a natural inclination toward products related to healthcare. Thus, data categorization can become even more precise when processed by professional platforms.

Another example is data that becomes more valuable when you come across someone with a keen interest in sports. In such cases, sports brands would be interested in acquiring this data to present sports-related product offers to those who share an interest in sports.

One piece of data can be utilized by multiple companies, which is why data has become a valuable asset in today's digital world.

I used to take surveys of various levels of importance, mostly low level quick survey (xbox points and such like) however I was once offered a thousand dollars just to fill out a 20 minute survey on my shopping preferences.   Somehow the survey company believed I was earning half a million a year or something silly like that and made this offer, I did not realize in time or I might have answered appropriately in order to qualify for the survey payment.  Half way through the survey they realized yes this guy is actually poor and thanked me for my time and closed the question answer session, zero compensation because I was too honest unfortunately.
   Im not sure why they thought I was so rich, if I had half a mil earnings I would not waste 20 minutes of my scarce highly valuable spare time on really painful questions so boring especially when payment being delivered is so fragile.

Demographics alters alot of things for advertising, some parts of the economy do not ever watch TV.  Often this is young people, up and coming target markets.  If you can supply data on people off the radar, its going to become alot more worthwhile.  This data worth sounds like general search engine stuff, non specific not much insight.
  I dont have specifics but a crypto blockchain is related this, they give data on customers and payments for using their browser etc. occurs.   

Is there a way that data cost is also related to status or profession? Like are these class of people sort after more or not because if they are, I think the data value could be higher. So with the research you did, could you determine if doctors, lawyers, engineers are better placed in data urgency than those of unskilled.

The cost of data for people in this category is cheap because companies will not like to spend more money on people who are close to retirement. These set of people are no longer that productive so their earnings might keep decreasing which might also affect their spending. Meanwhile, firms will always like to associate with long-term customers, and people between the age of 20-40 will be the ideal target. This group of young people is still active and can earn more, which means the firm will pay more to get their data.

The worth of data can also be determined by how easy or difficult it is to get the data. It has been observed that male in the Middle East are very conscious of their data because they live secret lives. So getting their data is difficult, which makes the cost higher. Also, many of them have high incomes so they will be targeted by firms.

Dark sites today sell complete information, including credit card numbers and more. But no matter how surprising it may sound to some, many independently disseminate information about themselves, providing documents left and right.
In addition, surfing the Internet also comes under the surveillance of advertising and tracking trackers, which an ignorant person who does not expect any tricks does not know how to get rid of.
I can say more: Bounty hunters are not so naive as to provide their data to bounty programs where client verification is required. The Internet is full of telegram channels where people’s data can be purchased in batches by country and gender.
Therefore, whenever you leave your data, you can expect that someday a loan will be issued in your name, which you will have to repay.

I think the use-case for the data are very important, because you derive profits from the targets that you are identifying with this data mining. Let's take the whole "faucet" era as an example and what ended their reign in the Crypto currency scene...

So, back in the day.... loads of Crypto faucets popped up like mushrooms and all of them were funded from Advertisement income. The sites went crazy to gain as much traffic as possible to receive more advertisement income....but it all ended in a "Bang" ...when the advertisement companies analyzed the traffic and realized that most of the traffic that were coming from these sites was worthless for marketing purposes.

How can you pay for traffic, when you have millions of people that are clicking a button to get a fraction of a cent... every hour? Is this the target consumer for products and services that you want to sell with those advertisements?

These companies want to target potential customers with a lot of money to spend.... and they pay premium prices for information on those type of targets. 

I'll spoil the idyll of worrying about private data a bit

Do you honestly worry so much, and keep your data as a secret ? Phone number, e-mail, full name, passport number ? Do you really think that this is critical information ?
And do you really think that this information is not available before it was sold on the darknet?
Then I have very bad news for you
All this information is available to those who may need it - government registries, tax office, banks,.... - they all have this data and access to it ! Don't get your hopes up about the secrecy of this data
That's why I can't understand what the problem with the BASIC data is ?
I understand - data on illnesses, account numbers and passwords, private correspondence, etc. But the BASIC data that we ourselves leave everywhere all the time - why are you so worried about it ?
In my country, for example, the registers of vehicle and real estate owners are OFFICIALLY open, and I don't see anything wrong with that!

Yes, and I have doubts about the data on gradation by income - do those who sell have information to the accounts of persons in their database ? If there is - the question is not to those who sell, but to those who leak this information to banks ...

May I ask for the source of this data that you have presented? I would like to use it in one of my presentations for my employer. There's an ongoing debate I am having with my boss about something similar so the source will immensely help me.

Data is the new oil! The digital marketers live on the data and patterns. But corporates who hold such data usually sells it at a much higher price.

As they say, data is the new oil.

That's why most of these huge tech companies are drowing themselves to these data and they're earning if not millions to billions on this one while acquiring those for free.

Aside from the business that they're having, they're taking our data and sells it to the advertisers. It's a win win for them but what can we do if they're offerring free service which most likely all about social media and communication?

It is unavoidable when our data has been floating even with our telcos, they've got us already even without stepping on the web.

I remember being so curious as to how different sites and apps are able to know what I'm doing online and what I'm currently interested in as they give accurate advertisements and recommendations every time. Thanks to one of my professors back in college, that's when I found out that businesses collect and sell our data. And seeing OP's post now, it seems like they are getting a lot from it. Hence, I thought everyone should know about the different types of consumer data that businesses collect. According to Max Freedman of Business News Daily, there are four types of consumer data that businesses collect. The first one is our Personal Data which are personally identifiable information like IP address, Social Security number, gender, and the like. The second is called the Engagement Data which pertains to details regarding an individual's interaction with a website, apps, pages, and ads. The next type is called Behavioral Data, which includes purchase history, user's repeated actions online, and (sometimes) even mouse movement. Lastly, there is Attitudinal Data which is about an individual's satisfaction, desirability, and purchase criteria for a product, website, and other online shenanigans.

To know more about these and other things relating to businesses collecting data and what they do to it, you may visit this link: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10625-businesses-collecting-data.html

That's because there is a cash prize for doing KYC. For bounty hunters, they get tokens for free and keep the tokens in the hope that the tokens will explode someday.

And those of us who do KYC on centralized exchanges do it too, right? That means it's the same as them because we hope to be able to use all the features on the exchange to make money, including its trading.

So we will easily provide personal data to carry out KYC because there is a reward in the form of money, tokens or other things. There is no need to consider other problems because they are each person's responsibility.

A presentation of data that has value because it is real, it can be collected at an expensive survey cost, so it is valuable and not free. and For business people, data is really needed to carry out a survey or some type of activity for development, well, what's sad is that sometimes personal data in some countries is still considered normal and not very meaningful, but the case is different from KYC on a platform. I remember that during the Covid period there was quite a lot of patient data that fell out of nowhere or was bought and sold, I also didn't understand where it was going.

With bounty hunters, personal data are not their concerns. They can accept all KYC types if by that they can receive tokens. Do those tokens worth anything, $1 or $10? I don't know and bounty hunters don't mind too. They KYC first and hope to receive tokens then hope those tokens have value.

Coinbase Learning rewards with Personal Information Verification requirements is an example. Small rewards but lose your personal data.

For sure, lots of people will say too low on this, but that's the sign that you would be selling your personal data. Our data should have no money value as we need to protect it, but right now I've seen a lot of people, mostly in my country, ready to sell their identity to whomever needed it as long as they were paid.
 
Recently this year, I saw a thread from our country forum that they will pay about $10 for filling out a form that contains your ID and personal data, and surprisingly, a lot of people do it, even using their parents identities.

Considering the data of a user on an app can be sold for as little as under a dollar, one can only imagine the sheer number of user data being sold to various organizations and also on a regular basis. These social media platforms repeatedly affirm on how they’re all about user privacy and how they care about ours only to go ahead to sell off tits bit of information about loads of users using their platform.
These information being sold may seem not important and even harmless but harmless information collected overtime, when put together, could become valuable and potentially harmful.  
 
Going through the article, I came upon the phrase; “If you're not paying, then you're the product”. I then thought about how I’m not paying Elon to use Twitter and I chuckled quietly.

Our personal data is meant to be protected, but, unfortunatly there is a market for it. Advertising companies pay so much for people's data, look at the total amount per demography, those are high amounts. Among the sold datasets include DNAs. It's weird that people's DNA get sold to advertising industry giants. Hence, the companies in control of the datasets, collaborate with advertisers to target a pool of audiences that love specific or different kinds of products. What matters to them is targeting the exact audience for the products using their DNA, which reveals the type of products a family likes, diversifying to any member of the family. The market is boosting and top tech giants use this kind of marketing for different reasons. The data or DNA owners don't authorize these transactions, their data sold for cents or millions. That's very risky to the owners of the sold DNA and other sensitive information.

source: https://uk.pcmag.com/news/130187/know-your-datas-worth

so a 56+yo hispanic person earning under $20k, their general data is worth $0.09

so a 20yo middle eastern person earning $130k, their general data is worth $1.31

data can also be worth more if specific demographs also have data that relates to an industry/product interest of the data buyer. EG a SCI-FI movie fans data would be worth more to a company that sells SCI-FI merch/entertainment products