If You’re Not Paying for the Product, You Are The Product
Privacy or Convenience – What Would You Pick?
By Michelle Tang
In this digital age where everything is just a click away, we have seemingly traded personal privacy for convenience.
In our on-demand technological era where everything is more or less tracked, total privacy is somewhat impossible to achieve. We must now accept the fact that almost all organizations we deal with for our daily necessities are gathering more and more intel on us whether we like it or not, with or without our knowledge.
The digitization of our lives has made an abundance of user data publicly available, which could easily be exploited. For instance, Acixom Corp, a leading data broker, collects around 1,500 data points a person for 700 million people worldwide. It processes over 50 trillion sales transactions a year by selling consumer data multiple times to multiple customers. It is not surprising that consumers are increasingly concerned over their lack of control in how their data is mined and abused.
Given that our data is routinely mined without our consent everytime we consume, wouldn’t it be more fair for us to be justly rewarded each time we shop and contribute our data? This is the idea behind the user data economy: all individuals should have the ability to control their own data. We should be empowered to decide how to share it too, and if we do, be able to reap a profit.
RewardMe App – Empowering Consumers to Earn From Their Consumer Data
Enter RewardMe. This innovative app empowers consumers to profit from their everyday shopping. In just a few clicks, you can bind your email or credit card and select your usual merchants (be it Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, Airbnb, HKTV Mall etc.). You will then automatically earn crypto or cash rewards each time you spend without needing to upload receipts or keep track of your expenditures.
Depending on how you would like to get reimbursed, the rewards will show up either in crypto (ME Token) or in cash. Users are permitted to earn up to 10% of shopping rewards and members can even stake their crypto to earn up to 20% p.a. in staking rewards.
As for privacy and data security measures, RewardMe is compliant with both GDPR and the CCPA.
Think of Your Data as a Product
Unless you want to be a luddite and removed from the modern data-driven community, you should really start perceiving your consumer data as a product. Instead of concealing our data, why not sell it to companies and profit from it in the process?
The best way to start is with our everyday purchases. Everytime we take an Uber, order delivery from Deliveroo or Foodpanda, and make daily essential purchases from HKTVMall we can rightfully earn some reward for our data exchange.
