Assessing MyData Scenarios: Ethics, Concerns, and the Promise

Public controversies around the unethical use of personal data are increasing, spotlighting data ethics as an increasingly important field of study. MyData is a related emerging vision that emphasizes individuals’ control of their personal data. In this paper, we investigated people’s perceptions of various data management scenarios by measuring the perceived ethicality and level of personal felt concern regarding the scenarios. We deployed the set of 96 unique scenarios to a paid crowdsourcing platform for assessment and invited a representative sample of the participants to a second-stage questionnaire about the MyData vision as well as its potential in the field of healthcare. Our results provide a timely investigation into how topical data-related practices affect the perceived ethicality and the felt concern. The questionnaire analysis reveals great potential in the MyData vision. Through the combined quantitative and qualitative results, we contribute to the field of data ethics.