How much would you sell your personal data?

Japan has been considering building a data market to assist companies create new services, as previously reported. The first application in such a data market would be the personal data exchange.

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation (MUTB), the second largest in trust business in Japan, announced that it starts a demonstration experiment for a new data management service from this August. Reportedly, it will launch this new service in 2019. The feature of this service is that individuals will be able to specify the personal data to be provided and a company which is permitted to use the data, while participant companies specify the utilization purpose and the type of data. It will comply with the requirements in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)*1. A fitness club, a travel agency and other two companies will join the demonstration experiment, and the participant individuals can get JPY 500 – 1000 (USD 4.5 – 9.0) monthly from each company.

I’m just wondering how the individuals will behave when they have obtained control over their personal data. Many of us have got to used to provide our personal data to a computer system or a company in exchange for convenience, even though we hesitate to provide such data to a person in front of us. I’m also wondering how the quality or user experience of services will change when the services have become created only based on data of persons who are willing to provide their personal data.

Note: *1 The Commission of European Communities will adopt the adequacy decision on Japan by the fall of 2018. (Finally, it has officially adopted the adequacy decision on January 23 2019.)

The European Union and Japan agreed to create the world’s largest area of ​​safe data flows