Historical Background of IMCO Online service providers and users’ data: Consumers becoming the product? Collection of consumer data in exchange for online services has become a regular part of many business models. While specific provisions have been adopted at the EU level to protect personal information (e.g. GDPR), the practice of mass data collection remains unchanged. What further steps should be taken to protect consumers’ right to their data, while minimising the financial impact on companies and their stakeholders? IConsumers’ data has throughout time become vital for sellers and service providers as a way to predict trend in demand and consumption. Yet supply is becoming ever increasing in a vast pool of information online, it is not beneficial to simply wait for the consumer to find the product, whilst advertisement in general has been utilised for many years, currently targeted advertising is the new phenomena. A service provided by large online service-providers (such as Google, Facebook, Youtube) where based on data collected from a myriad of sources, profiles are generated and appropriate items for such a profile is then directly marketed through advertisements when using these platforms. However, as stated, such practice would not be possible without the systematic collection of consum-
er information, even to such an extent, that many companies, big or small, opt to sell the data generated by individuals and their peers when utilising most online services. Now with the current European vocal point being in Personal Data Protection, with the recent General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, whilst the control and processing of personal data is made stricter with a clear possibility of enforcing non-compliance, the increasing application of personal data in generating demand was left partially unanswered, as the practise is deemed acceptable if the consumer agrees. However, to what extent is a consumer able to make an independent decision when the service provider holds a quasi-monopolistic position (Google, Facebook).