Selling Our Personal Data

News.com has an interview with John Deighton, a Harvard Business School professor, onb the issue of who owns one’s personal information. His point: “The information that is gathered about you by stores, researchers and credit agencies belongs to those companies, not to you. They in turn resell that information to others. So if our personal information is such an asset, shouldn’t we benefit from our asset as well? Why shouldn’t intelligent consumers sell their identities to stores they trust? And wouldn’t those trusted stores in return be motivated to use that information wisely?…The challenge is to give people a claim on their identities while protecting them from mistreatment. The solution is to create institutions that allow consumers to build and claim the value of their marketplace identities and that give producers the incentive to respect them.”