Bynamite brings a somewhat different perspective to the privacy market. “Our view is that it’s not about privacy protection but about giving users control over this valuable resource — their information,” Mr. Yoon said.
Both the protection and the value approaches to the privacy market could well pay off, says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm. “What’s intriguing about Bynamite,” he said, “is its emphasis on privacy as revolving around choice and ownership of data, and ultimately a notion of an exchange of value.” (Kleiner Perkins is an investor in ReputationDefender but not in Bynamite.)
Although Bynamite is a tiny start-up, it points toward larger issues about privacy transactions and pricing of personal data. “In reality, we constantly make transactions involving our personal information,” said Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Every search on Google, Mr. Acquisti notes, is implicitly such a transaction, involving a person “selling” personal information and “buying” search results. But people do not think about, or are unaware of, the notion that typed search requests help determine the ads that Google displays and what its ad network knows about them.
Bynamite, Mr. Acquisti said, is “simply trying to make these kinds of transactions explicit, more transparent to the user.”
Dr Tomer has talked about this issue in LIS 2600 & LIS 2000.
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