Is privacy the last asset we have left? When data becomes wealth, people become commodities

In 2026, the theme of privacy, terms and conditions on the use of data by the mysterious “third parties” has become an anxiety-inducing recurrence, reminding us how much of our lives and information about who we are is actually entrusted to others through technology. Between mega-billionaires who live shrouded in mystery, mega-celebrities who by policy do not let anything leak about their private lives, and periodic leaks of access credentials, intimate materials and so on, it has become alarming to realize how many eyes are on us and how fragile the secrets we have are.

In fact, if on social media the culture of visibility has exposed the risks of fame, a second, more insidious process has made privacy a precious commodity: the industrial-scale collection of personal data. This has made defending one’s data almost a necessity, turning privacy into a luxury. The paradox, however, is that fashion itself has become an industry based on data, user profiling, and the harvesting of access and information. But why?

The oil of the Web era

Worldwide, explains Yahoo Finance, the global market for companies that collect, process and resell personal information, known as data brokers, was worth 303 billion dollars in 2024 and grew to 332 billion in 2025, with an annual growth rate of 9.8%. Projections indicate it will reach 480 billion by 2029. According to Grand View Research, 35.1% of this entire huge industry consists of consumer data, ranging from demographic information to purchasing behaviors, biometric parameters and online browsing data. Information about people’s lives is one of the most profitable segments in the world.

A treasure that attracts its thieves: in 2024 alone, events such as MOAB (Mother of All Breaches), the National Public Data Breach and the Change Healthcare case saw the theft of billions of users’ data worldwide. And as early as 2018, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that user data could be used to manipulate political elections. Data is also monetized through hyper-profiled advertising.

According to industry estimates, global advertising revenues reached 1.14 trillion dollars in 2025, with 8.8% growth driven entirely by behavioral user profiling. And according to data from Italia Oggi, in our country the digital market is worth 6.2 billion euros, with Google, Amazon, Meta and TikTok holding a large share. And in the data gold rush, one of the most passionate sponsors is the luxury industry. But why?

Monitoring customers to serve customers

Over the years, luxury brands, traditionally protectors of exclusivity and discretion, have become increasingly dependent on data collection. Now that the ultra-rich segment has become existentially important for luxury and that, to sell, it is necessary to remember each customer’s tastes and preferences, brands have started to keep increasingly detailed databases: luxury boutique staff know addresses, emails and phone numbers; they know physical measurements, tastes and personal preferences, and even details such as birthdays or anniversaries of customers or their relatives.

No need to imagine diabolically refined situations: very often in luxury this whole process results, for the end customer, in continuous phone calls from salespeople trying to lure them into the store, invitations to events, and a constant flow of emails that the rich do not seem to love too much. Some luxury clients in Milan anonymously told nss magazine that they have provided fake phone numbers or emails to boutique staff, also saying they miss the times when, upon purchase, you only needed to pay without having to give so much information about yourself. And they have every reason to feel that way.

In 2025 the luxury sector was hit by a series of systematic data breaches. The LVMH group recorded the most significant cases: Louis Vuitton suffered several hacker attacks between May and July during which names, contacts, addresses, phone numbers, purchase history, preferences, and in some cases passports or government IDs, of hundreds of thousands of customers in various countries were stolen; Dior was hit in January, with notifications mainly for Asian and American customers. Chanel suffered a breach in July on a customer database managed by an external provider. In the same period Gucci and other Kering brands were also attacked, along with Cartier and Harrods.

In no case were credit cards compromised, but only personal data valuable for future phishing. But this is certainly not enough for the ultra-rich of the planet, who in fact work and pay a lot to have their privacy and data protected with increasingly thick walls.

A new type of service

And indeed the demand for digital privacy services, personal cybersecurity and reputation management among high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals has been growing strongly in recent years. According to the J.P. Morgan Global Family Office Report 2026, cybersecurity now represents one of the most outsourced services by family offices (38% outsource it, second only to legal and trading), while 32% indicate it as an absolute priority service. Other reports confirm that about 43% of family offices have suffered at least one cyber-security incident recently, pushing private banks and specialized companies to offer dedicated “concierge” solutions for digital protection.

The rich’s search for privacy also indicates the desire to escape the involuntary exposure that comes from flaunting wealth. Being discreet helps avoid data thieves, scammers and fraudsters. The discretion of the rich serves to keep hidden their absence from home, their movements, and their lifestyle. Speaking to TechTimes, professor and researcher Kate Crawford said: «This is the creation of privacy as a luxury good. It also has the unhappy effect of establishing a new divide: the privacy rich and the privacy poor».

Social status in the age of surveillance

For decades, status has been expressed through visibility and ostentation of luxury locations, expensive purchases, dinners in Michelin-starred restaurants and so on. Visibility has worked both as a product and as a tool of the social media industrial complex, but now that this complex has grown, this type of ostentation has become inflated (no wonder everyone relies on thirst traps nowadays) and the exposure that was sought has become exposure to identity theft, scammers, hackers, cancel culture, and violation of the private sphere.

This is why for the rich and ultra-rich the “new” status concerns controlled access, offline experiences, the private club where photos and videos are forbidden. They isolate themselves from the masses both physically and digitally. But even in the world of normal people, disconnected experiences, dumb phones and the return to analog speak of a desire to distance themselves from an increasingly predatory Internet and a return to authenticity of existence. As a famous meme says, in the ’90s the Internet was used to escape the real world and today the real world is used to escape the Internet.

We have basically realized that public attention is not neutral, that data is not abstract, that visibility has consequences. Gen Z has lived in the midst of cancel culture and call-out culture, was the first to understand that it was no coincidence if they saw an ad for a product after casually talking about it out loud, and experienced firsthand the explosion of phishing and online scams that are now endemic. And perhaps more than a luxury, privacy has today become synonymous with autonomy, an indirect form of power. And like every form of power in the contemporary era, it is distributed unequally. The rich can buy it. The others have to settle for being mined.