97 Kellogg Insight Social-media data can be a boon to marketers and researchers. What happens to individuals? Individuals badly underestimate the amount of information that can be gleaned from even the most pedestrian online behaviors. “Even really innocuous things such as ‘liking’ a supermarket’s page can eventually build a very predictive profile of a person, including basic demographics, but also more sensitive things like someone’s political leanings, religious preferences, and health conditions,” Cutler says. Moreover, data collection is cumulative, and not always in ways that are easy to explain, track, or predict. “A consumer might not care that a specific small app can access her iPhone photos,” Cutler says. “But when she realizes that companies are merging together, or merging their data, suddenly there’s this data beast that knows everything about you.” Read more about the connections between online behavior and individual privacy here on Kellogg Insight . Featured Faculty Jennifer Cutler , Associate Professor of Marketing at Kellogg Based on research from Jennifer Cutler