Your Google Information Is Worth up to $5,000 a Year to Marketers

By now, you may have already checked to see what kind of person Google thinks you are (if you’re a femaleMashable reporter, Google apparently assumes you’re a middle-aged man). Google’s new, unified privacy policy can show you that, as well as how much we pay for the free services that provide Google with that data.

Yes, Google+ and Gmail are all free, but we pay for those services in a currency of personal information. Privacy firm Reputation.com says your personal info could be worth anywhere from $50 to $5,000 per year to market researchers and advertisers.

Google says it doesn’t and won’t give advertisers your information; it uses your info to target what it estimates to be more relevant ads that it has already sold.

SEE ALSO: Google’s Privacy Update: What You Need to Know

Social networks, similarly, rely on users’ private information to make money too. “Their entire market cap is related to how much data is being collected and used,” Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, told SmartMoney.

Check out the video above to learn more.

Posted in: Google