"Everywhere we are leaving trails of “breadcrumbs” behind us – voluntarily and involuntarily, like with online transactions or mobile telephone and GPS signals. All these personal data are creating an increasingly intimate record of our lives – both for ourselves and for those who, for one reason or another, want to know more about us."

"Consumers would be surprised at how much data is held, to what extent their day-to-day lives generate all this information. The analysis can be very revealing. Something as minor as a postcode can tell you what someone living there earns, what they spend and where, giving a tremendous steer for financial products."

“We humans are now walking, talking data factories. Passing through a subway turnstile, sending a text, even just carrying a phone in your pocket: we generate location-tagged data on an hourly basis. All that data can be a boon for urban planners and designers who want to understand cities–and, of course, for tech companies and advertisers who want to understand the people in them.”