Comment by radu_floricica

Well, I'm sure they will gladly pay you the few cents that your contributions is worth, after substracting expenses, profit, and dividing between all customers.

It's a free resource only for _them_, because they've already invested what they've invested. For you to get the same "free" resource, you'd have to pretty much make the same investment.

I'm not sure what the data retention laws are in US, but what I'd personally find reasonable would be a mandatory "opt-out" option for all such services. Not opt-in, mind you - there is a host of innovation waiting to happen once such data becomes available, and by far most of it will be positive.