January 27, 2012

What is Your Privacy Worth?

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Privacy experts estimate that your personal privacy — your online activities that companies such as Google are collecting and offering to marketers and advertisers — could be worth up to $5,000 per individual per year. Under Google’s new privacy policy, this information could be worth a lot more than that.

Under the current social contract that Google has with its users, you are voluntarily trading that value for the use of a free service.

What do you think ? . . .

Does Google have the right to sell your private information? Should companies like Google and Facebook be paying users for their data?

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

A cratered, spherical celestial body with a bright spot on its surface floats in dark outer space dotted with stars.

Hard Science

Ceres: The asteroid belt’s forgotten ocean world

As the closest icy ocean world to Earth, Ceres may be a promising candidate in the search for signs of ancient life.

A grayscale portrait of a man in a suit is centered between a grid background and a photo of someone skiing on snow, symbolizing the future of collaboration. Abstract wavy patterns fill the upper center.

Business

The Snorre Kjesbu interview: “Collaboration will become truly immersive”

Snorre Kjesbu — SVP & GM of Cisco’s Employee Experience group — has a bold vision for the future of human interaction.

Black and white illustration of a stylized human eye in the top left and a detailed depiction of an eyeball’s internal structure in the bottom right on a beige background.

The Well

What NASA is really looking for in space

We may be close to finding life beyond Earth. But would we even recognize it if we did? Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar explains what signs NASA is looking for.

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Betül Kaçar

Two side-by-side images of a galaxy cluster in space, captured by JWST, showcase numerous bright galaxies and stars on a dark background—highlighting one of the most extreme gravitational lens effects ever observed.

Starts With A Bang

JWST captures its most extreme gravitational lens ever

Massive galaxy cluster Abell S1063, 4.5 billion light-years away, bends and distorts the space nearby. Here’s what a JWST deep field shows.

Infographic illustrating three steps to measure the Hubble Constant, showing Cepheid variable stars, supernovae, and galaxies at increasing distances with redshifted light—highlighting how these methods reveal that the hubble tension is real.

Starts With A Bang

Ask Ethan: Is the Hubble tension a real problem?

Is the Universe’s expansion rate 67 km/s/Mpc, 73 km/s/Mpc, or somewhere in between? The Hubble tension is real and not so easy to resolve.

Up Next

Personal Growth

Obama Leads to Curb Tuition Costs

President Obama has announced a plan to increase the federal tuition loan fund, double the amount of work-study programs and create incentive programs to drive down tuition costs.