Expensive Free

Abstract

Digital platforms, as a rule, offer their services to at least one of the parties without a monetary fee, but by charging another resource – information – in the form of personal information and digital footprints. Analysis mechanisms of collected information provide companies with hidden competitive power, which, on the one hand, allows them to increase efficiency, but on the other hand, carries potential threats for many individual users and for economic welfare. The main research question concerns the presence of incentives to maintain or enhance privacy on the Internet, which arise not only from users, but also from business, as well as the role of government regulators in this process. Some of the urgent regulatory decisions to develop a competitive environment in digital markets and ensure transparency of processes within ecosystems, discussed in this article, can provide progress in user control over their personal information. At the same time, the proposed changes will lead to additional information security risks (and other aspects). The question of ensuring the guarantor reliability related to privacy on the Internet remains open.