We share a lot of our personal information online. Much of it is voluntary – like filling out a Facebook profile and offering up our location, job and school history, age, and even date of birth. (How else would people remember to wish you Happy Birthday, after all?) And despite all the voluntary sharing we do, we often expect that the sites we share with won’t involuntarily share our info with third parties.

Getting Value

As reported by Gizmodo, the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act would require the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to create and enforce regulations relating to the commercial disclosure of personal data:

“When a big tech company says its product is free, consumers are the ones being sold. These ‘free’ products track everything we do so tech companies can sell our information to the highest bidder and use it to target us with creepy ads,” one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator Josh Hawley said in a statement. “Even worse, tech companies do their best to hide how much consumer data is worth and to whom it is sold. This bipartisan legislation gives consumers control of their data and will show them how much these ‘free’ services actually cost.”

Getting Paid

Good luck asking for those costs from Facebook now. Nothing in the proposed legislation requires tech giants to pass on a piece of their data profits to users. However, seeing how much your personal information is worth in the data economy may make you think twice about how much you decide to share online.

Related Resources:

  • Find Internet Lawyers Near You (FindLaw’s Lawyer Directory)
  • Legal How-To: Deleting Your Personal Information From the Internet (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)
  • Can You Sue Facebook for User Data Breach? (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)
  • 7 Simple Steps to Protect Your Online Privacy (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)

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