People sell all kinds of stuff on eBay. The past brings us listings for immortal souls (deleted), Britney Spears hair (mostly deleted), and even cruel Christmas presents (deleted pronto). And now someone is selling his personal data to the highest bidding marketer.
Seller “highlytargeted” posts a picture of Star Trek’s Data character as his avatar (we’ll assume for now that’s covered under Fair Use parody protections). The item for sale: MY DATA: Non-Personally Identifiable Info for Marketing.
Current bid is $100, which is where the bidding began. There’s still nearly two days left, though.
Highlytargeted’s pitch begins with ways marketing data can be flawed or skewed. He (because our anonymous seller mentions his wife, we assume “he,” though we all know other genders can have wives in some areas) offers instead his actual anonymized targeting information marketers can use to send him messages via email for 30 days.
With his feedback of how effective they are, of course.
So what does the auction winner get for their money? Here’s the list:
· My past 30 days internet search queries
· My past 90 days web surfing history
· My past 30 days online and offline purchase activity
· My Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Marital status, and Geo location
· The right to target one ad per day to me for 30 days
So what’s that type of information worth? We’ll see in a couple of days. At least it appears to be for a good cause. The seller says he’s donating the proceeds to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
