Another entrant into the growing market for data trading is a company called Jigsaw Data Corp. The model is simple, you collect business card and email signature lines, you enter these contacts into the Jigsaw database for points and than you trade those points for cash or more contacts.

Instead of harping on the obvious privacy nightmare that this creates, lets look at this from Jim Fowler’s (CEO of Jigsaw) perspective.

If I send something out into the world, then I expect it’s going to be used by the world. … Jigsaw might be the only data company that thinks about this stuff.

The point is that sometime, somewhere the thin line that separates our private lives and public data-points started to blur. It seems only natural that entrepreneurs would spring up who are more than willing to take advantage of this moral ambiguity. As the web expands and its benefits become more profound, so too will the need to manage privacy.

Privacy can no longer simply be implied. We are all responsible for controlling how we want our information to be shared, whether that means limiting access to sensitive email address’ or even copyrighting business cards, the responsibility is ours.

Whether Jigsaw sinks or swims is not the question, as long as there is data available to mine there will be someone willing to gather it. The only question that is of any practical value is how each one of us will deal with this fact.

It might be time to take a closer look at just how private your private data really is.