People will give up their personal info if you give them a good reason

We face a constant barrage of requests for our personal information every day, and more often than not our first concern is who has access to that information and how will it be used. At GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference, a panel of experts from the worlds of biology, location analytics and data science talked about how the concepts of personalization and privacy concerns don’t have to be at odds with each other. People will give up their personal information if you give them something they find personally valuable, Ken Chahine of Ancestry.com, Naveen Jain of Inome and David Shim of Placed agreed. Just like people used to be afraid of browser cookies and their implications for privacy and now accept them as standard, Shim, Placed’s founder and CEO, said he believes our attitudes toward our location data will undergo the same transition once people understand the inherent value of what they’re getting back in exchange for what they’re giving up.