
Non-personal data can become highly personal if augmented by contextual data. For example, your presence on the high street is probably not very personal on its own. Now augment this data with a purchase in a wine bar, followed by a taxi ride to someone's house before you arrive home. Suddenly, the combined data could become highly personal.
The data for this hypothetical scenario is already being harvested by service providers and smartphone apps such as travel maps, card and mobile payments, internet search, social apps, etc.
How will we balance the need to provide personal data for specific service provision and prevent this data from being combined with other personal data shared for a different purpose? How can the service providers assure users of the use of personal data AND other data about the user?
According to #GigaOm, the data privacy ship left a long time ago. Is it really too late to do something constructive to safeguard personal data?