Published on April 15, 2024 at 5:04 p.m. / Modified on April 15, 2024 at 5:05 p.m.
Would you be willing to exchange some of your personal data for money? Last March, the online shopping platform Temu launched an insidious promotional campaign in France and the United Kingdom: in exchange for vouchers and direct transfers to Paypal, new registrants had to agree to lifetime use of their personal data by Temu. In other words, it was €100 for information such as name, profile photo, voice and other biographical information.
Faced with analyzes by data protection experts and outraged reactions, the company suspended the program shortly after its launch. However, the communications service assures us: Temu only had the profile photo and the name of each person participating in the operation. The general conditions of use which accompanied the promotional campaign were in fact not the right ones, the Chinese company justifies itself.
“Data that goes to China or the United States is more problematic”
But Temu is not the only company showing interest in our personal data in exchange for money. Amazon and Shein, another Chinese online shopping platform, have recently launched similar campaigns. Other start-ups are also riding a trend which could be summed up as follows: “Gafa absorbs your personal data anyway, so why not sell it to us?”. This is how TaData, Caden, Weward, and dozens of other similar services were born. One (like Weward) offers “gifts or money” in exchange for journeys on foot and personalized offers linked to geolocation while others (like Caden) play on the linking of data coming from third-party applications.
For experts, the risks are numerous. Although we know better what data we are transmitting, we do not always know where it ends up. The nature of the data can also be problematic: selling health or location data, for example, means exposing yourself even more. For Livio di Tria, expert in new technology law, it comes down to this: “These companies are trying to monetize data, with a view to advertising online. These are companies that claim to bring transparency to a model that ignores transparency.”
Illusory anonymization
Caden and other Weward rely on the anonymization of the data collected in order to convince users. Illusory, for Livio di Tria:
“The more data we have, the less easy it is to guarantee that it remains anonymous. Moreover, from an advertising perspective, what is interesting is still having a name to target products. Moreover, European authorities recognize that anonymization in such an ecosystem is difficult.”
On the side of the FRC, Jean Busché is concerned about “the guarantees available to the user, to be able to withdraw, destroy or modify the data once they have been sold”.
According to him, “if the data is stored in Switzerland, even if many companies do not respect the law, there are rights. Data that goes to China or the United States is more problematic.” As for Temu, consideration is reportedly underway to launch a similar promotional campaign in Switzerland within “the coming weeks”: “we will first take stock of participation, which has had great success in France”.
