My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing? And then isn't stealing obviously hurting me?
Just because you don't know how much your data is worth, and may not even know the crime happened, doesn't make it not a crime or not harmful.
Consider voyeurs who take upskirt photos. Even though the victim may never know that data was stolen, it's undeniable that it's an invasion of privacy and often a criminal offence.
Isn't it disingenuous to say it's stealing? From my perspective, I would be exchanging my data with the services provided and if I have a problem with the level of data collection I can always stop using the service and delete my account. I'm sure there are services today that are useful to me that are not possible without data monetization.
It's a question of degree, I don't inherently mind being advertised too or getting targeted advertisements. I do mind having my entire location history known by many parties.
I can get the former largely without the latter. I am concerned when a random app has access to the latter because they feel entitled to collect it by virtue of installation.
> My data is worth money, that's why they want it. If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing?
Because it’s not actually yours and you didn’t create it. It’s about you which is a critical difference.
If you connect to a web server and it records a standard access log of a timestamp that it received a request from a given IP address, that’s data 100% generated by the server. That’s not “your data” any more than a recording from a surveillance camera at a gas station you frequent is “your video”.
> If they take it from me without permission, how is that not stealing?
They don't take it. The value of your information is either inherent (is all information inherently valuable somehow?) or in how it can be used. There is no information "staked claim" as with a natural resource. If you don't have the infrastructure and relationships, you can't monetize it... similar to natural resources. Maybe there should be an individual "staked claim" (which is what the GDPR mostly does), but arguing as if it's a given because "I should be able to make money and nobody else should" is not compelling. This is why there are so few laws regarding it and there's the inherent quasi-legal issue of tracking someone's "staked claim" without tracking them.
Just because you don't know how much your data is worth, and may not even know the crime happened, doesn't make it not a crime or not harmful.
Consider voyeurs who take upskirt photos. Even though the victim may never know that data was stolen, it's undeniable that it's an invasion of privacy and often a criminal offence.