How Much Is Your Information Worth?

Privacy on the Internet has become a huge issue between consumers and companies these days. From social networking sites to your personal e-mail accounts, companies now have access to every bit of information you put out there. But the most important question is how much is your information worth?

According to www.newsweek.com "privacy has it's price." Younger people these days are putting more information out on the web than ever before. They just don't seem to care as much as the generation before about the privacy. With this new age of thinking, marketers can cash in on all the free consumer behavior information that is provided to them on the web. For example, just by adding your likes and dislikes on your social networking site, companies now have information to target you directly with a variety of e-marketing advertisements. They can even target your friends who most likely have the same interests as you.

According to www.newsweek.com "your privacy has become some kind of currency, it is what we use to pay for online services." For example, www.Google.com charges you no fees for their Gmail service, but uses the information you provide to send out advertisements based on your key words and phrases that you use in your private e-mail messages.

It will be interesting to see the future of the online community and if consumers will continue to give out free information in order to use these free services. Will we find a way to sell our information to companies? and How much would companies pay for this information, knowing so much of it can be found for free? Most importantly, will the younger generation continue in the fight to keep our personal information private?