How much is your data worth? Senators want tech companies to tell you
A new bipartisan bill will make companies disclose how much money they make off of their users.
Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Josh Hawley will introduce a bipartisan bill to make tech companies let users know how much their data is worth.
User data is big business for social media and other tech companies, but most people outside of those businesses don't know how much that data is worth. New legislation aims to make tech companies disclose the dollar value of your personal information.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, will introduce the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act on Monday. The legislation will require companies that gather user data to disclose what data they're collecting and assess its value.
"For years, social media companies have told consumers that their products are free to the user. But that's not true – you are paying with your data instead of your wallet," Warner said in a press release Monday. "But the overall lack of transparency and disclosure in this market have made it impossible for users to know what they're giving up, who else their data is being shared with, or what it's worth to the platform. Our bipartisan bill will allow consumers to understand the true value of the data they are providing to the platforms, which will encourage competition and allow antitrust enforcers to identify potentially anticompetitive practices."
Companies with more than 100 million monthly active users would have to file an annual report on the value of the user data they collected and any deals they have with third parties for that info, according to the Dashboard Act. They would also have to disclose the types of data gathered, how much its worth, and allow users to delete all or parts of their data. The Securities and Exchange Commission would be in charge of developing the methodologies that will calculate the data's value.
In an interview with Axios on Sunday about the upcoming bill, Warner singled out Facebook saying the social media platform knows more about their users than the government does. Facebook has been at the center over the controversy of users' privacy since last year's Cambridge Analytica scandal.
"We look forward to continuing our ongoing conversations with the bill's sponsors," a Facebook spokesperson said in an email Monday.
Facebook does provide its average revenue per user in its quarterly earnings report. In April, the revenue for each user was $6.42.
Source:cnet.com
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