What would an actual market price be for this PII?
Let's say someone offers $X, and in return they post on a public website your name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and employer. Not a lifetime feed, but a single snapshot of this information taken between 4 and 36 years ago, to match the details of this university leak. Maybe some additional info like what grades you got, but not your financial or health history. This offer is made to all adult Americans.
What would X need to be? I suspect the vast majority of Americans accept this at $10,000. And a very significant number take it at $100, or in return for access to a trendy new social network or a discounted television or similar.
I'd take this offer for some five figure sum, which would not be a life changing amount to me. It's a complicating factor that SSNs are traditionally a vector for fraud, but that would go away once people take this offer.
Oh that's easy. There's a business model at play here. The point of this information is to make you spend more, and the value of that information is something like 1%-2% (goods) to 30% (of things like credit card fees you pay) of what you spend more if the shops around you know this information.
So from your perspective, the net value of the information is negative. Very negative in most cases.
The power of this model is the adversarial aspect. If there's 2 stores, especially online, and store A knows this info it can be 10% more expensive and grow faster than store B. Which means stores can't choose not to pay, it's a losing proposition and these businesses will die if advertising works even a little bit.
This aspect is why Google, and everyone, want AI to "fight" over everything: the adversarial aspect. Because for any particular purpose, OCR, or even making entire movies, there's a level of AI that's "good enough". Google or Facebook might reach that level 6 months earlier than everyone else (I would have said 10 years earlier 5 years ago, but even OpenAI's advantage has has shrunk to 2-3 months now, so I feel 6 months is generous), and I'm sure that'll be a good business ... for 6 months, if done well. But if you can create a fight where the best AI wins, then AI is worth the highest amount anyone will offer ...
Do I spend more, or on different things? And do I get any extra value out of the extra things I buy? Most people spend approximately all of their disposable income. The information is valuable to marketers fighting to divide up that pie, not to increase the total spent.
If it does significantly boost the amount of money spent and thus the velocity of money, should governments consider publishing everyone's PII as a way to stimulate economic growth?
the price for a standard "US Fullz" record is between $5 and $30. slightly more if their credit score is exceptionally high (allows for bigtime fraud), but nothing more than $100. I think the low price is driven by a seemingly infinite number of leaks.
Let's say someone offers $X, and in return they post on a public website your name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and employer. Not a lifetime feed, but a single snapshot of this information taken between 4 and 36 years ago, to match the details of this university leak. Maybe some additional info like what grades you got, but not your financial or health history. This offer is made to all adult Americans.
What would X need to be? I suspect the vast majority of Americans accept this at $10,000. And a very significant number take it at $100, or in return for access to a trendy new social network or a discounted television or similar.
I'd take this offer for some five figure sum, which would not be a life changing amount to me. It's a complicating factor that SSNs are traditionally a vector for fraud, but that would go away once people take this offer.