All You Can Pay: How Companies Use Our Data to Empty Our Wallets

by Anna Bernasek, D.T. Mongan Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Overview

While millions of consumers carry on unaware, powerful companies are racing to gain more knowledge and data than anyone, including any government, has ever had. The goal is to understand consumer behavior and desires, from mundane matters to our most private and intimate affairs. This massive trove of data represents an immense prize for these companies. In economic terms, it is one of the most valuable assets on the planet. In All You Can Pay, Anna Bernasek and D.T. Mongan show how companies use what they know about you to determine how much you are willing to pay for certain products and services. Colleges calculate the price you pay based on the information revealed in the application almost all parents submit for federal aid. Hotels, sports events and health products and services are also using this strategy. The price of everything online-from airline tickets to toilet paper-now fluctuates from moment to moment. Through a toxic combination of price discrimination and cutting-edge technology, sellers can instantly change the price they charge an individual based on their calculations of demand and supply at that point in time. Online stores use your zip code to charge you a different price from someone in another zip code. Bernasek and Mongan offer a dire warning and demonstrate how big data threatens the very icon of the American way: the free market. The ability to understand consumers on a granular level, in real time, and simultaneously to customize the price each person is offered, shifts the balance of power away from the consumer so dramatically that the freedom of markets is at risk. The trend is alarming and, if left unchecked, the destination is clear. Yet consumers and companies can still choose a different path, and in this chilling and illuminating book, Bernasek and Mongan show us how.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A well-written, vivid, and harrowing look at the microcosm of surveillance. A must read for all concerned citizens." —Robert Scheer, author of They Know Everything About You and The Great American Stickup

"There have been plenty of warnings about corporations profiting from data and compromising privacy, but this straightforward analysis never succumbs to alarmism while letting the facts speak for themselves. [The authors] build a case that will hit home with the personal finances of any reader who has ever done anything online. [They] understand how to write about specialized topics for a general readership, and they deliver their most frightening news in the most understated, straightforward manner... Hope lies in what the authors call 'Data Environmentalism,' raising the consciousness about this threat the way Silent Spring sparked the environmental movement. Well informed and useful." —Kirkus Reviews

“Anna Bernasek and D.T. Mongan have produced a model of lucidity—and urgency—on a topic that needs to be 'top-of-mind' for all of us. Everybody—in the true meaning of that word—ought to read this book. Now. ” —Tom Peters, international bestselling author of In Search of Excellence

Kirkus Reviews

2015-03-02
There have been plenty of warnings about corporations profiting from data and compromising privacy, but this straightforward analysis never succumbs to alarmism while letting the facts speak for themselves.New York Times "Datapoints" columnist Bernasek (The Economics of Integrity, 2010, etc.) and finance lawyer Mongan are plainly well-versed in their topic, but once they get past some macroeconomic table setting, they build a case that will hit home with the personal finances of any reader who has ever done anything online. The authors understand how to write about specialized topics for a general readership, and they deliver their most frightening news in the most understated, straightforward manner: "Virtually everything about us is known and collected by someone," they write. And if that weren't enough: "The most detailed report prepared by analysts working for the Stasi or the KGB…doesn't begin to compare with the comprehensive data wake shed by each consumer. Every minute of the day we shed data in profusion." As our devices reveal what we want, what we buy, where we are, and who we are, we are caught in "the trend from mass markets to mass customization," one for which we pay a cost in loss of privacy and often in actual dollars. Those who benefit are the Big Ten of corporations that collect data (Amazon, Google, Facebook et al.), engaging in what the authors term a "world-wide data war, ‘World War D.' " The problem is that the book does such an effective job of stating the significance, depth, and expanse of the threat that the solutions seem like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. Hope lies in what the authors call "Data Environmentalism," raising the consciousness about this threat the way Silent Spring sparked the environmental movement. Well informed and useful. The authors stress that the ultimate answer is "you," but will you read all the fine print to educate yourself?

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171445348
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos