My Life Is Not Inventory: Why Personal Data Should Never Be Sold
I love technology.
I make music, play video games, build websites, work on apps, and create Discord bots. Technology has given ordinary people the power to create things that once required entire companies. It connects us, entertains us, helps us find information, and gives independent creators a chance to be heard.
But loving technology does not mean blindly trusting every company that controls it.
In fact, the more I understand about technology, the more uncomfortable I become with the amount of personal information large companies collect about us. I am even more uncomfortable knowing that some of this information can be packaged, transferred, shared, or sold to companies, data brokers, government agencies, and other organizations we have never heard of.
I do not believe our personal lives should be treated like merchandise.
My location is not a product. My search history is not a product. My private interests, financial concerns, health questions, relationships, routines, political beliefs, and personal struggles are not products.
My life is not inventory.
Collecting Data and Selling Data Are Not the Same Thing
I understand that some technology requires information to function.
A navigation app needs my location when I ask it for directions. An online store needs my address when I order something. A bank needs transaction records to manage my account and detect fraud. A music platform may need to remember what I listened to so it can save my history or recommend similar artists.
That is not the same thing as selling information about me.
There is a major difference between using data to provide the service I requested and treating that data as a separate source of revenue. When I give a company my address so it can deliver a package, I am not giving that company moral permission to build a profile of my household and sell it to strangers.
The Federal Trade Commission has reported that data brokers collect information from numerous sources, often without consumers knowing they exist, and sell that information for purposes including marketing and fraud prevention.
Fraud prevention may be a legitimate use. Secretly turning people into advertising profiles is another matter.
Companies should be allowed to use the minimum information reasonably necessary to provide a service. They should not be allowed to quietly transform that information into a permanent commercial asset.
Clicking “Accept” Does Not Make It Right
The usual defense is that we agreed to the collection.
Technically, that may sometimes be true. We click “accept.” We agree to a privacy policy. We continue using the website.
But I do not believe that clicking a button beneath pages of legal language represents meaningful consent.
Most people are not lawyers, privacy specialists, or cybersecurity experts. They do not have the time to study every policy before using a weather app, ordering food, applying for work, reading the news, or talking to family members.
Even when someone reads a privacy policy, the language may only identify broad categories of recipients such as “partners,” “affiliates,” “service providers,” or “trusted third parties.” That does not necessarily tell a person who will eventually receive the information, what other databases it will be combined with, or what conclusions will be drawn from it.
The Government Accountability Office has found that businesses collect, use, and sell consumer information for commercial benefit while consumers may remain unaware of how their information is collected and used. It also found that consumers generally have limited ability to stop collection, confirm accuracy, or maintain control over their privacy.
Consent should be informed, specific, and freely given. It should not be buried inside a legal document that people must accept to participate in modern life.
Location Data Shows How Dangerous This Can Become
Some people hear the word “data” and imagine a harmless spreadsheet filled with anonymous numbers.
That is not always what we are talking about.
Location data can reveal where someone lives, works, worships, receives medical care, spends the night, or goes during a personal crisis. A pattern of movements can expose relationships and routines without recording a single private conversation.
In an enforcement action against X-Mode and Outlogic, the FTC alleged that precise location data could be used to track visits to sensitive locations, including medical and reproductive-health clinics, places of worship, and domestic-abuse shelters. The FTC later finalized an order prohibiting the companies from selling or sharing sensitive location data.
In another case, the FTC acted against Mobilewalla over allegations that it sold sensitive location information, including information capable of revealing an individual’s private home, without taking reasonable steps to verify consumer consent.
That is not harmless advertising information.
That is a map of someone’s life.
A person visiting a medical clinic should not have to wonder who may eventually purchase evidence of that visit. Someone entering a domestic-abuse shelter should not have to worry that a commercial database recorded it. A person attending a church, mosque, synagogue, political gathering, union meeting, or support group should not become a purchasable data point.
Once data reaches enough companies, brokers, contractors, and databases, promises about responsible use become increasingly difficult for an ordinary person to verify.
Government Access Concerns Me Just as Much
My concern does not stop with private companies.
I do not want elected officials, law-enforcement organizations, intelligence agencies, government contractors, or other public authorities obtaining detailed information about people merely because a private company decided it was available for purchase.
The Government Accountability Office reported in 2024 that emerging technologies have rapidly increased the amount of personally identifiable information federal agencies collect, share, and use. GAO also found that agencies followed different policies because there was no comprehensive government-wide approach covering civil-rights and civil-liberties protections for the use of personal data.
This is not a hypothetical concern. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has published a formal policy framework governing Intelligence Community access to and processing of commercially available information, including rules concerning sensitive information about people in the United States.
I understand that governments have legitimate responsibilities. They investigate serious crimes, respond to threats, protect national security, and search for missing or endangered people.
Those responsibilities do not justify unlimited access to everyone’s private life.
Government agencies should be required to follow clear laws, demonstrate a legitimate need, obtain appropriate judicial authorization when required, keep detailed access records, and face meaningful consequences for abuse. The government should not be able to avoid strong legal safeguards simply by purchasing information from the private market.
When companies collect more information than they need, they do not only create an advertising opportunity. They create a surveillance opportunity.
America’s Privacy Laws Are Still a Patchwork
This topic is difficult because the legal situation in the United States is confusing.
As of February 2026, the United States still did not have one comprehensive federal privacy law governing how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information. Instead, federal protections generally apply to particular industries, purposes, or categories of information. GAO also reported that, as of November 2025, 19 states had enacted broader privacy laws that were already effective or scheduled to take effect during 2026.
That means a person’s practical privacy rights can depend heavily on where they live, what kind of company holds the data, and what category of information is involved.
California, for example, gives covered residents rights to learn what information certain businesses possess, request deletion in some circumstances, correct inaccurate information, limit some uses of sensitive information, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information.
Those are meaningful protections, but basic control over one’s personal life should not depend on living in the right state.
The federal government has enacted some narrower protections. The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act prohibits data brokers from providing personally identifiable sensitive information about Americans to designated foreign adversaries or entities they control. The FTC identified those foreign adversaries as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
I support preventing hostile foreign governments from purchasing sensitive information about Americans.
But that law also raises an obvious question: If sensitive personal data is dangerous enough to prohibit certain foreign entities from buying it, why is the underlying trade in people’s private lives still acceptable?
The problem is not only who buys the information.
The problem is that the information was placed on the market.
I Understand the Opposing Argument
I know there is another side to this debate.
Companies argue that collecting and analyzing information supports advertising, personalization, fraud detection, product development, and services that people can use without paying a direct subscription fee. The FTC’s study of the data-broker industry found that brokered information was sold for purposes including marketing and fraud prevention.
I understand that argument.
Servers cost money. Developers need to be paid. Small businesses need affordable ways to find customers. Fraud can destroy people financially. Some personalized recommendations are genuinely useful.
But none of that requires us to accept unlimited surveillance or the sale of intimate personal information.
A company can display advertisements based on the page I am currently viewing without creating a permanent behavioral profile. A service can process information locally or retain it for a limited period. A company can ask for genuine permission before using information for an unrelated purpose.
The choice is not between unrestricted data sales and the complete destruction of the internet.
Technology companies are some of the most innovative and profitable organizations in human history. I do not believe creating a privacy-respecting business model is beyond their ability.
It is simply less profitable than collecting everything.
My Position Is Not Complicated
I do not believe personal data should be sold.
Not to advertisers.
Not to data brokers.
Not to political organizations.
Not to government contractors.
Not to government agencies seeking an easier path around normal legal safeguards.
Not to some unknown company hidden behind the phrase “trusted partner.”
A company should be permitted to use information for the specific service a person requested. Any unrelated use should require clear, separate, informed permission. Sensitive information such as precise location, medical interests, biometric identifiers, financial activity, private communications, sexual behavior, religious activity, and political activity should receive especially strong protection.
People should have the right to see what information exists about them, learn where it came from, know who received it, correct it, download it, and permanently delete it when there is no legitimate legal reason to retain it.
Companies should also be required to collect less information in the first place.
Privacy should not begin with an opt-out form hidden at the bottom of a website. It should begin with restraint.
Privacy Is Not About Having Something to Hide
Whenever privacy is discussed, someone eventually says, “I have nothing to hide.”
To me, that misses the point.
I close my front door even when I am doing nothing wrong. I do not publish every private conversation I have with my family. I do not hand strangers my complete financial history. I do not invite unknown companies to follow me through every ordinary moment of my day.
Privacy is not an admission of guilt.
It is the right to decide which parts of your life belong to other people.
There may never be one universally “correct” opinion about data collection. Technology provides real benefits, and some information processing is necessary. I am willing to acknowledge that complexity.
But my personal line is clear.
Use the information required to provide the service I requested. Protect it. Delete it when it is no longer needed. Do not turn it into a profile that follows me for years.
Above all, do not sell it.
My personal life belongs to me.
It should never belong to the highest bidder.
End transmission.