(Finance) – 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 – is 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 monetized. “In Italy, however, the companies that rent or sell data are mainly foreign and, although the rules are there, very often they operate in what can be defined as a real Far West. Especially companies that operate outside the European Union, very often, they 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 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 a single use, we do not sell them. We collect an average of 5 thousand new names from our five channels per day”.
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 registry 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 arrives to those numbers after the rental deadline date, we know that the company in question is not respecting 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 we send a million people that we can hire are 900 thousand and the number, unfortunately, increases more and more with each passing day.Once the Fub has been done, anyone who is registered in the register of oppositions is put on a black list and we do not contact him again “.
How often do you update these lists?
“If we have to carry out ten deliveries in one day, it means that we have to carry out 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. 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, does he have a 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. It must be indicated an e-mail address to which requests can be sent and consents changed. 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 derives from the rental of the data. By renting to a large company, such as Eni, for example, 500,000 master 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 The shop has a thousand shirts, once sold it no longer has them. A company that collects data and rents it always has it”.
Do the companies that rent the data use it for telemarketing activities?
“Companies use the data to make calls in which they mainly offer energy, telephony, 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 earning happens in a different way. They can see where someone is, they can listen to the voice to profile the user like I say I talk to my wife about pots and pans and, coincidentally, it comes out the advertising of the pots “.
What happens when you authorize cookies by visiting websites?
“Cookies are used to track the sites visited by the user and to resell advertising based on interests. If he visits a site for shoes of a certain brand, advertising for that product will be sent to the user. The principle is the same but the value of this data is much lower because there is no complete master data 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 gas and electricity offers, which they can even cost 10-11 euros each since, in fact, they are 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 around 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, the user should be informed that his personal data is being transferred to a certain company and let him sign the relevant 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 give the data and the fourth allows us to give the data. 70% of users authorize all four”.
Do you check the companies you rent your data to?
“We carry out 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 do not rent data abroad, especially in Albania, to avoid renting to companies that, once they have acquired the data then resell them 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 held 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 compile 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, traces remain of the fact that the user whether or not he has given permission to process his data. In the case of foreign call centres, 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 that use 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, front names. Then there are real scams. Call centers that call to offer offers or services posing as for someone else for the sole purpose of getting money sent or getting a customer to switch telephone operators in fear of an increase in the competitor’s operator’s tariff”.