Today is Data Privacy Day.  ListensToYou was founded not just to give an alternative to advertising based on data collected without user consent, but to participate in the awareness and discussion of data privacy.  Many people have told us that they don’t care about giving away their data.  Others have told us that the ListensToYou model would be difficult to implement because people are getting more and more comfortable giving up their data.  We think that is a problem - NOT that it is always a problem to give up your personal data, when you choose to do so, but to do so only because it seems more natural these days or because it is so common that people barely notice.

Erick Schonfeld, one of my favorite writers at TechCrunch, wrote a good post about this today.

I just want to remind people to give some thought to how they want their data to be accessible to organizations.  I think ListensToYou is a good step toward giving an alternative method of advertising, but there are more situations to think about - passwords, friends, pictures, etc.