Information Pricing: A Utility Based Pricing Mechanism

Big data is the biggest asset today, for organizations to amass and leverage to improve on services and profits. Knowing this, data brokers have excelled in the task of collecting information about internet users from a variety of sources, both online and offline, and then sell this information to interested parties. This robs the users of the monetizing potential of their information. In this paper, we have put forth our idea for users to monetize their information and at the same time, preserve their privacy by obfuscating their information. Once this is done, the utility of the information is obtained by comparing the cumulative distribution functions (CDF) of the data before and after obfuscation. This would allow the buyers in the information market to obtain a fair estimate of the quality of information that they would be purchasing from the users. In our opinion, this is a fair and balanced method that caters to the needs to all the stakeholders involved in the information market scenario.