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One alternative suggestion that I haven't seen explored (but I'm sure isn't original) is that privacy concerns are often the result of human intuition about our evolved environment rather than about our modern one. Thinking of data collectors as just algorithmic and disinterested in you personally doesn't come intuitively to most people. If they're collecting your information and using your information for something that they profit from, surely they must have some specific interest in you, they must be taking something from you that is yours, and you don't want them to get that which belongs to you. When it comes to physical goods, proprietary knowledge, or genuinely clandestine information in a Dunbar-limited world, these concerns basically make sense. If you had information that you could sell to some other guy to make money, you'd be pretty pissed off that someone was ripping it off! Likewise, if someone collected something you thought was private, it would be quite reasonable to be concerned that they're trying to hurt you, or at least want leverage over you in the future.
We're looking at more of an intuitive statistical gap in understanding small percentage chances. There is clearly a greater chance that if my private information is stored at police headquarters that some sequence of events will lead to someone at police headquarters using that information against me in some way, than if that information is not stored at police headquarters. Most people aren't capable of actually calculating the expected value of that probability, so they either round it up too high or too low.
Most people don't have the information to even estimate. If your GPS location pattern marks you as being high risk for being a drug courier and you keep getting pulled over for minor and imagined traffic violations as a result, how would you even know that's what's resulting in the harassment?
It's worse. I have to estimate it long before anything goes wrong.
And my modal case is something like coming into contact with a person of interest. Or it's personal, your former coworker with an axe to grind or your ex boyfriend or your new girlfriend's ex boyfriend with a grudge, happens to have access to that kind of thing in some way or another.
That probability is impossible to estimate in advance. When I went skeet shooting in 2017, I could not have known that multiple people I shot with would be indicted in federal court on "insurrection" charges. I've seen friends stalk romantic partners, perspective and current and former, all across the internet including misusing work tools to do so. I have no method of assessing the people I interact with for whether they materially increase that risk.
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Oh, actually, people also seem to drastically overvalue what their private data is worth.
Anecdotally: So, I don't have health insurance (I have wealth insurance instead, for catastrophes and it can't call itself insurance). So, I pay the retail rate for drugs. But it turns out there's a whole bizarro world economy where you can go to goodrx.com and get insane discounts off of the list price, like 90% or more and the drug ends up costing less than it would with an insurance copay.
Anyway, I have no idea how this works. I asked the pharmacist once why this free coupon knocked $10 off of this totally mundane drug that millions of people take. Her knee-jerk reaction was "because they sell your data". She really thought the fact that I take this med + my email address is worth $10 to someone. Not just that one time, but every time I refill it.
So, extrapolating "taking something that's yours" and "$10+ per take", I could see a recipe for widespread driving people crazy about privacy.
…what would feel like a good price?
I agree that $10 is way too high for any real value of that data. I could also believe that it’s where companies end up after factoring in all that bizarro-world. Maybe they sell the data for $1, but are also saving for bureaucratic reasons. Maybe it’s one of those loss-leader things where the cheap Xanax keeps people (or insurers?) in the program when they have to buy the long tail of exotic drugs. My personal guess would be that it has something to due with Medicaid pricing, because that derails literally everything.
I think it's probably worth a penny, at most?
Anyway, my research suggests these goodrx.com coupons are actually drug manufacturer rebates to the pharmacy off of their wholesale purchase. The manufacturer is effectively using this channel to quote much lower prices to uninsured poor people who would otherwise be forced to go without.
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