There is no free lunch, internet behavior is not safe

Absrtact: There is no free lunch, internet behavior is not safe. When you are free to use Google search, browsing microblogging, instant chat, service providers are also prying into your data. Since Snowden has exposed the NSA's plans, it has deepened everyone's

There is no free lunch, internet behavior is not safe. When you are free to use Google search, browsing microblogging, instant chat, service providers are also prying into your data. Since Snowden has exposed the NSA's plans, it has deepened concerns about privacy.

But there are also a few people who have an indifferent attitude to their data being dug up--if there is a payoff. And some start-ups are aiming at this and buying and selling data from users.

Datacoup, founded in 2012 in New York, is one such company. Early this year they launched a testing service to buy data on various social networks and credit card consumption records to users at $8 a month. But Datacoup currently supports user data acquisition programs including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Flickr, Google+,tumblr, Youtube, Instagram, Foursquare As well as debit and credit card data, users can choose among them and the more items they choose, the higher the returns they receive. As for the data collected, the DATACUOP will be processed, filtering out the extremely sensitive, unwanted parts of the advertiser, and then selling.

Luth, by contrast, seems to offer a much richer price, at $100 a month. The price of a user is to open up all the actions on his smartphone, tablet or PC to Luth.

Luth has launched a service called ZQ FDI, which connects to the phone and computer of a pre-selected participant via VPN, and then routes the data to the company's servers to complete the trend collection and analysis work. The company will not browse the contents of the message, but will collect information about the location of the smartphone at a given time, the site visited, the search performed, and the frequency of Twitter. In addition, participants have to answer questions about their behavior.

Luth's trend analysis has attracted a number of clients, including Subway, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, San Diego Padres, Nickelodeon and Netflix. The information gathered by Luth can help these companies decide where to put their ads. And for advertisers, targeted advertising success rate is very important, because the Internet is now the advertising point of less than 1 per thousand.

Luth a project for Ford this year that aims to better understand the customer's "buy path". The company first identified a group of research objects that wanted to buy a car and followed them through the whole process of doing a survey to the final purchase. His people might drive to the dealership and then visit other automakers ' websites and then study the loan scheme. These actions helped Ford make decisions on the best place to advertise. For example, if the results show that the customer is very interested in evaluating the site, then Ford can focus on working with the site, where to buy ads.

Luth finally found out that once customers started browsing the manufacturer's website, they were ready to buy a car. This was discovered after the project was completed, and this is a very important sales clue.

Although many people are not accustomed to being tracked like this, ZQ FDI currently has 20,000 PC users and 6000 smartphone users. Depending on the amount of investigation conducted, each user receives approximately 100 dollars per month of income. Users can uninstall the software at any time if they don't like it, but it also means they lose a paycheck. In turn, Luth sells the data to the highest bidder, and the buyer can also add to the investigators ' behavior-related issues.

In April this year, Punchtab, an advertising agency, had conducted a survey of 1100 smartphone users. The results showed that 27% of respondents were willing to allow retailers to track themselves on mobile phones in the event of a certain return, such as coupons or sales notices.

Last month, Verizon, the US operator, has launched a loyal user program for its 100 million wireless users, as long as users allow operators to track part of their location and web browsing behavior and agree to sell the data to marketers in return for a "Smart rewards".

Of course, such user data wholesalers more, users can also send the label to the data company, so that the other bidders, the highest bidder. Conversely, businesses that are interested in user data may also offer pricing depending on the potential value of the user. For example, a businessman might think that a millionaire's data is more valuable than a blue-collar worker. But the reality is that there may be no market, rich people may pay more attention to their privacy, as a priceless, and the people who have no money may not value their privacy, but they hope to gain greater value. In addition, it may seem that a completely market-based mechanism can also cause social problems due to class differences-the same is the location of data and browsing data, why is his more valuable?