Big Data: inside the business of the new digital “black gold”.
(Teleborsa) – The Italian big data market is growing which, in 2022 – according to data from the‘Big Data & Business Analytics Observatory of the School of Management of the Milan Polytechnic – worth around 2.41 billion euros (+20% compared to 2021). For companies, this is the new digital “black gold”: once the data has been extracted and refined, it can, in fact, be distributed and monetised.
“In Italy, however, the companies that rent or sell data are mainly foreign and, although there are rules, very often they operate in what can be defined as a real Far West. Especially companies operating outside the European Union, very often, do what they want”. Talking is Vincenzo Augurio, chairman and Group CEO of Media Asset. Acting in compliance with the rules governing the sector, the company – with 16 million personal data – boasts the largest proprietary database in Italy. It is the first totally autonomous network that manages millions of proprietary data, creativity and market strategies in the field of Telemarketing, Mailing, Display, Mobile and Leads lists in all sectors. The company has over 30 proprietary web portals and with the BigData.it brand it manages billions of data and offers effective means of reaching over 15 million users throughout Italy profiled by gender, age, zip code, date of birth, name and surname.
What is your business about?
“Our core business – explains Augurio – is to commercialize personal data. We offer free services on various channels – from cooking to petitions, from coupons to work to holidays – in exchange for a registration on the portal. We commercialize the data of those who authorize us, those of those who do not do so we keep them exclusively for the purpose of sending newsletters and information on the subject matter of the site in question. We manage and rent this data for one-time use, we don’t sell it. We collect an average of 5,000 new names a day from our five channels”.
What data does a personal data include?
“Name, surname, gender, date of birth, city, province and zip code. These are the classics since we take them combined with an email address and mobile number”.
What is the rental cost?
“On average 12 cents. The rental consists in being able to contact a user only once in the space of 3 months after which the personal data must be trashed”.
How can you be sure that such data is not used beyond the rental period?
“In each data supply we also enter our internal telephone numbers by assigning a first and last name to each owl. If a call comes in to those numbers after the rental deadline date, we know that the company in question is not complying with the terms.”
Does it happen often?
“With large companies it never happened, with small ones it sometimes happens. It happens more frequently with call centers”.
You are directly responsible for obtaining consent to data processing and provide contact details of persons for whom you have authorization. Has data management become more complex with the intervention of the Public Opposition Register?
“It has become much more complex. Already on average for each Fub (module that allows the import and export of updated lists of names who request not to be contacted again, ed.) we lose about 10% of users. It means that if we send one million people we can hire 900,000 and the number, unfortunately, increases more and more with each passing day. Once the Fub has been made, anyone who is registered in the opposition register will be put on a black list and will not be contacted again”.
How often do you update these lists?
“If we have to do ten deliveries in one day, it means that we have to do ten checks in one day. Working properly in Italy has now become really heavy”.
In terms of data transfer, there are also suppliers who do not behave correctly. Is there a sort of wild west in this sector today?
“Absolutely yes. Unfortunately, many sell company data, or stolen data, without going through the Opposition Register. There really is everything on the web”.
When the user signs or “flags” the consent to his data, has he any way of knowing if he is transferring them to a serious company or if this data will meet a bad end?
“The user can check within the privacy of the site if the dbo (database owner) is indicated, if it is an Italian company, if it is registered in Italy, how the data is processed. An e-mail address to which requests can be sent and consents can be changed must be indicated. A serious company must make all the channels available to ensure that the user can unsubscribe or modify his data when he wishes”.
Data is called the new black gold. What is their value?
“The real value comes from the rental of the data. By renting to a large company, such as Eni, for example, 500,000 personal data can be collected for 70,000 euros a month. And once the data has been collected, there are no more investment costs. If a store has a thousand shirts, once sold it no longer has them. A company that collects data and rents it out always has it”.
Do the companies that rent the data use it for telemarketing activities?
“Companies use data to make calls in which they mainly offer energy, telephony and financing services. But we don’t rent to everyone, there are, in fact, borderline services”.
You have sites where you offer content in this case coupons etc. bad. To date, the entire app market is made to collect data
“We don’t do that type of work, but there the earnings take place in a different way. They can see where someone is, they can listen to the voice to profile the user like I say I’m talking to my wife about pots and pans and it happens that the commercials for pots come out “.
What happens when you authorize cookies by visiting websites?
“Cookies are used to track the sites visited by the user and resell advertising based on interests. If you visit a shoe site of a certain brand, advertisements for that product will be sent to you. The principle is the same but the value of this data is much lower because there is no complete registry but only an IP address. The highest value is found in profiled personal data such as those collected by comparators relating, for example, to requests for offers for gas and electricity, which can even cost 10-11 euros each since, in fact, deals with requests for estimates”.
Is there a market also for the sale of personal data?
“Yes, but we don’t sell them. The selling cost is about 10 cents. It’s lower than the rental cost because there’s a parallel market: if I sell a registry I don’t sell it to just one company, I can sell it to 50 companies. And this is the problem that arose in Italy: in this way a user no longer knows who to contact to cancel the authorizations. By law, it is necessary to inform the user that his personal data is being transferred to a certain company and to have him sign the relative consent, but that type of market is often illegal”.
Do you also have to have the consent for the transfer of data to third parties signed separately?
“Absolutely yes. There are four flags. To use our services you must agree to terms and conditions and privacy. With those two the only thing you can do is send a newsletter. A third flag allows us to send advertising but not to transfer the data and the fourth allows us to transfer the data. 70% of users authorize all four”.
Do you check the companies you rent your data to?
“We do a chamber of commerce registration, even if in 90% of cases we work with well-known large companies. We do it for small call centers and we don’t rent data abroad, especially in Albania, to avoid renting to companies that, once acquired the data, then resell it 20 times”.
Is there a need for better regulation of the sector?
“The Code of self-conduct has just been signed which provides for various requirements including the fact that a company must be Italian. The rules are changing. We recently had a meeting with the Mise for the Opposition Register”.
Why is it important that companies that process data are Italian?
“It is important that companies that produce data have servers in Italy and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certificates. In this case, when a user registers, a ‘stamp’ is placed directly on the server. In this way it remains a trace of the fact that the user has given or not the authorizations for the processing of his data. In the case of foreign call centers, the Guarantor cannot see the data on the server and carry out this check”.
On the front of the Opposition Register, in your opinion, what should be changed?
“There are so few companies using it that it doesn’t work. On average, only 10% of registered companies use it”.
And companies that do not use it do not incur penalties?
“There are sanctions but very often companies that do not respect the rules are not caught because they are abroad. There are illegal operators, figureheads. Then there are real scams. Call centers that call to propose offers or services posing as someone else for the sole purpose of having money sent or of making a customer change telephone operator fearing an increase in the tariff of the competing operator”.