Unfair market status

Taking Google as an example, when you register and log in to your Google account, you need to collect your name, email address and password, birthday, gender, phone number, and country (GooglePrivacy2017). This information can help Google have a basic portrait of the user (UserProfiling) and push more relevant ads or content to the user. When a user starts using Google services, it may collect emails sent and received by the user, contacts, calendar events, uploaded photos and videos, documents and forms, etc. This information can help Google better understand user behavior when using Google products to optimize the user experience. For example, a shopping software can track the user's behavior when using the product and learn that the user closes the "Video Advertising" page every time it pops up, and then reduces or cancels the pop-up of the page to the user. Take Foursquare, a mobile service based on user location information (LBS), as an example. It stores and analyzes check-in information contributed by users and launches its own big data product, Foursquare Location Intelligence. In early 2016, Foursquare predicted a 30% sales decline in the company's first quarter by analyzing user check-in data on the platform at Chiptole's fast-food chain across the United States. Although Foursquare collects users' geographical location information, this type of data collection does not involve users' Personally Identifiable Information (PII). In fact, the data required by most Internet products will not sell users' personal privacy information, but it is not ruled out that some unscrupulous merchants will also make profits by collecting such information. Internet users are becoming more and more concerned about whether their data is used by Internet companies and choose to refuse cookies, web tracking or data sharing (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2016). The rate of users choosing to block ads (Ad-block) is rising. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of users choosing to block mobile ads experienced an unprecedented surge (Page Fair 2017 Adblocking Report). Even a trustworthy company like Google has long faced criticism and doubts from users. In June, Gmail published a blog announcing that it would no longer scan its users' mailboxes for the purpose of advertising in the future.

However, will the anonymous data collection of users really cause a lot of trouble to users?

If users, data suppliers and data buyers are still in such an unequal position, it is not difficult to imagine that more and more users will refuse to share their data. However, if users can understand the relationship between big data and network services more clearly and transparently, and even if users can obtain due value compensation from sharing data, perhaps many users will readily accept it. This is just like offline survey companies usually encourage customers to complete surveys in the form of gifts or vouchers. Most customers will not say no to such a friendly invitation.