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Virginians value social media data at $1,875

Posted at 4:47 PM, May 14, 2018
and last updated 2018-05-14 16:56:16-04

RICHMOND, Va. – How much do you think your social media data is worth?

According to a study of 3,000 Americans by Security Baron, Virginians believe that there’s is worth $1,875 and that people in Virginia would exchange that amount of money for it.

If you are from the commonwealth and think that number is high, it certainly wasn’t the highest of the 50 states. People from Vermont valued their social media data at $4,125, while West Virginians valued theirs the lowest at $375.

Another fun fact from this study is that out of Americans that were surveyed, one fifth said that they would buy or access someone else’s social media data, with 23 percent saying that they would sell their own social media data if they could profit from it.

This survey on the value of social media data comes at a time when online privacy is a hot topic because of a variety of political and social issues regarding U.S companies, such as Facebook, and even the federal government.

“This is clearly an important issue,” says Joe Auer at Security Baron. “Privacy is incredibly valuable, but this survey shows that we are, in fact, happy to put a price on it! Maybe this should be a wake-up call to us all to be more careful in future.”

The study also alludes to that people would rather have free social media, which has become a concern because of how the federal government received questions from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg on how the social media medium would respond if they were not able to sale advertisement on its service.

Lawmakers in a congressional hearing were not happy with Zuckerburg about the selling of social media data to the British company Cambridge Analytica, through an app builder they gave users information to. Some lawmakers hinted that they would support regulation against social media companies like Facebook and ones similar to it.