6. People are the product, but they don’t get paid

The extensive use of smart phones and social media creates billions of saleable private data which is being exploited by thousands of suppliers and traded for billions of dollars. Their secret techniques are nothing new – I remember Barclaycard in the 1980s telling me that it made more money from selling personal data to other suppliers that it did from its customers transactions. Users appear to be entirely ignorant and/or uncaring about the depth of information about their financial status and purchasing history held by a multitude of shadow suppliers.

The Figure shows my forecast for ITC spending by customer type; I expect consumer spending to continue to fall behind business spending. In 2018 it will fall by 2.9% to $2.5 trillion, while business spending grows by 5.0% to $4.1 trillion.

It’s logical that eventually suppliers will pay their prospects for personal information in order to increase their sales, especially if GDPR and other data protection laws around the world are successful in limiting the current high levels of exploitation. Social media has made ‘people the product’, but I doubt whether they’ll start to get paid in 2018… it’ll have to wait until 2019!

Navigate our predictions – intro 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10