20 sec winning speech for ADC award 2011

Among the craziness of graduation, a bite of delight:

With the project Active Tribes winning the 90th Art Directors Club Award, I was asked to enter a 20 sec winning speech for the publication. This is what I made, with the help from Scott, Sara, Jerry(our rockstar security guard) and Daniel. Thank you guys!

Can data brokers help you?

When months ago Intelius launched its new service that lets you track who has been using your personal data for marketing purposes, it was a promising sign that protest can be claimed by millions of common users vulnerable to data mining with the help of data brokers. We can start redeeming ownership to our information by filtering marketers and even help them increase data mining efficiency.

The good thing about these services is they create active management of data. Though it can mean that restriction should be made first to create the value of giving. For example, Allow Ltd. helps one erase personal information from as many marketing databases as possible, to ensure the scarcity of the data source provided by itself. It sounds like a huge cleansing job but at least we start to consider drawing a line to the ever-expansion of useless personal data.

The potential concern for using data broker is the reliability of the service provider. The monopoly of personal data by a third party keeps the stake of its own credit extremely high. Like in many philanthropic organizations, once a case of corruption is reported, it can take forever to earn back the trust from the public.

Data brokers are making the transition for online privacy service, turning a vulnerable user to an proactive one.  Now it attracts users by making their data sellable to advertisers, but as the overall skill of privacy management  increases, the users may finally get rid of them and to start a negotiation directly between their private data and people selling them products.