Is it illegal for companies to sell data?

By Paul Randal With no government laws saying that the ISP must use the telephone line, we'd have an effective unlimited telephone service with cheap monthly charges (the monthly bill would be a lot more because you can only do so much). One of the reasons why this type of plan isn't happening is the big media conglomerates and their influence on government. You need to see where those companies get their money; they invest in politicians. What this means is that they influence how government policy is decided to benefit these companies in the long run, rather than you or I.

It's sad that with the government spending almost half of our taxes we end up subsidizing companies such as Amazon. This could have helped people who are struggling to keep up with the cost of energy, the cost of food, etc. Instead, a company gets this amount for basically sending people to read ebooks when you can buy them for a dollar.

The company in question is Microsoft. The last time I posted about Microsoft was back in 2025, when Tim Cook showed Microsoft and Steve Jobs the light by taking control of the tablet market. The next year saw many companies jump into the fray with Apple, HP and Samsung leading the pack, and Android became the go-to OS for tablets. It became easy for Microsoft to stay behind because of the fact that it was too late to create its own OS, like it once did.

This makes me think of all the people who use my website. A bunch of you use it all the time, even if you don't understand all the aspects of blogging or whatever you do on my site, you learn something from it. I also hope it comes in handy for you if you're stuck somewhere without a computer.

When it comes to Google, I really feel for Microsoft. It's just like going through a death row. No one wants to go to the electric chair but when you do, people expect no mercy.

How do I legally sell data?

The most common way is by charging a subscription fee.

That's a pretty straightforward model, but you can do other things, too. For example, you might sell data on a per-transaction basis. You can also sell data for things other than the information itself. Think about data analytics. There are companies that will perform analyses of your company's financial data and give you advice on how to improve your business. Or you might sell data on a per-transaction basis.

Can I sell my data? The short answer is no. While you may be able to transfer data to another entity, such as a marketing or advertising company, it's not really a sale.

How much do I have to sell? The legal answer is that you don't have to sell anything. As long as your data is not a trade secret or confidential information, then you can simply use it for your own purposes. The IRS says the same thing. There are no regulations regarding selling data to third parties.

You don't need a license to sell data. Many companies think they need a data license, but in fact, there is nothing to stop you from simply offering the data to a third party. This is true even if you are using the data for commercial purposes.

What if someone else sells my data? If you provide data to a third party for a fee, the person who actually provides the data has full control over how the data is used. If they choose, they can keep the money and give your data to others. So, while you might be worried that someone else will sell your data, it's not going to happen.

Does my data automatically go into the public domain? It depends. Most states have some type of opt-out provision in their public records law. For example, under the Florida Public Records Law, data may be made available to the public if such right of access is not limited by statute or court rule. So, if the state doesn't restrict access to your data, then it's generally available.

What if I only want certain people to have access to my data?

How companies turn your data into money?

The promise of Big Data

It's a common sentiment that big data is a lot of hype.

I tend to agree with that sentiment in part because I find the hype around big data really misleading. The hype says something like, data is just data and data is easy to collect and ignores how companies use data and, more importantly, doesn't describe what you can actually do with the data.

The hype says, Big data analytics can uncover hidden patterns in big data sets and that sounds pretty cool. But the truth is most big data companies don't really know what to do with the data they have or what kind of answers they might uncover. I think the hype is misleading because it assumes that what you can do with your data is all that's possible.

The truth is that your data might be just a small piece of a much larger puzzle and that companies will only use your data if they know how to turn it into money. And even when companies do figure out how to monetize data, it's likely that your data has more value for them than for you.

Data is a commodity. The real value in data is usually insights and predictions that people care about. The companies that figure this out can then offer these insights and predictions at a lower cost. The insight could mean that the company can charge a lower price for products or services or that it can offer a better experience for customers.

What big data companies really do is assemble big sets of data, figure out how to make insights from the data and then sell the insights to someone who needs those insights. A typical big data company is going to do two things with your data: Turn it into insights that help them make decisions based on what you did. Sell these insights to you or someone else. Insights are what companies care about. At its core, the biggest problem companies have is how to turn raw data into insights. The challenge is that there is just too much raw data to keep it all in your head. A big part of what the hype does is pretend that companies know everything about your data and that your data is so incredibly valuable that they'll happily give it to you for free.

How much do companies sell your data for?

We are all familiar with the headline figures: a single Facebook user may be worth 3, while one of Google's 1.

But it is the price tags for ad-targeting that are the more worrying.

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently published a report looking at the cost of targeting in the UK, US and China. The UK data costs, for example, were 1.34 per targeted view (though this is less than the 2.56-per-view figure used by Facebook). In China, they were 4.40 - three times more than in the UK.

That's because, for online retailers, in China more than anywhere else, the potential value of data is worth paying for. In China, one in five online shoppers buys goods from companies based outside the country. These cross-border sales are a key part of the country's trade balance - so knowing where people are in China is an important part of a firm's strategic understanding of its customers' needs.

In China, a company can learn about its most important consumer demographics, such as their location, income level, age and gender, with data bought from companies such as Alibaba and Tencent. It can use that to plan for the next few years, and determine how best to reach consumers in their areas.

But if a firm sells all that data, what would they get in return? Not much, actually. It is a rare online retailer that gets access to any more than a small fraction of its target audience. That means that targeting is done by the lowest bidder, so it is often very cheap. And it is only the cheapest bidders who sell the information that is most valuable to a retailer.

As John Lewis senior vice-president Simon Franks said when the company launched its own version of the London Underground map in 2025, "If you give me my choice between buying targeted advertising at the low end of the market, or paying for data at the high end of the market, I will go for the latter every time." That was the message of the Economist report.