Last month, Brazil announced it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow its citizens to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world. 

The project is administered by Dataprev, a state-owned company that provides technological solutions for the government’s social programs. Dataprev is partnering with DrumWave, a California-based data valuation and monetization firm.

Today, “people get nothing from the data they share,” Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and board adviser for DrumWave, told Rest of World. “Brazil has decided its citizens should have ownership rights over their data.”

In monetizing users’ data, Brazil is ahead of the U.S., where a 2019 “data dividend” initiative by California Governor Gavin Newsom never took off. The city of Chicago successfully monetizes government data including transportation and education. If implemented, Brazil’s will be the first public-private partnership that allows citizens, rather than companies, to get a share of the global data market, currently valued at $4 billion and expected to grow to over $40 billion by 2034.

The pilot involves a small group of Brazilians who will use data wallets for payroll loans. When users apply for a new loan, the data in the contract will be collected in the data wallets, which companies will be able to bid on. Users will have the option to opt out. It works much like third-party cookies, but instead of simply accepting or declining, people can choose to make money. 

The “dWallet” allows users to deposit the data generated by their daily activities into a “data savings account.” After a user accepts a company’s offer on their data, payment is cashed in the data wallet, and can be immediately moved to a bank account.

The project will be “a correction in the historical imbalance of the digital economy,” said Kaiser. Through data monetization, the personal data that companies aggregate, classify, and filter to inform many aspects of their operations will become an asset for those providing the data.

“This initiative can lay the foundation for a data ownership model that promotes financial inclusion and redefines the digital economy from a fairer perspective,” Rodrigo Assumpção, president of Dataprev, said in a statement in April.

But data protection specialists in Brazil, home to the most expansive data privacy framework in Latin America, are concerned that this commoditization may raise the price of data, making it inaccessible for smaller companies and even state offices with low budgets. The project could also widen the digital divide in a country that lacks robust digital infrastructure in rural areas.

3 in 10 Brazilians are functionally illiterate

“We will be asking half of the country that doesn’t know how to read to decide if their data can be bought for a certain fee,” Pedro Bastos, a researcher at Data Privacy Brazil, told Rest of World. “People in situations of vulnerability will say yes, and this might be used against them.”

Worldwide, data monetization has so far been led by the private sector. Companies such as Datarade, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft have created data marketplaces where clients can purchase data sets for their large language models and other artificial intelligence products. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have created their own government-backed infrastructure to commercialize data. Separately, China allows companies to treat data as assets while the United Nations has said countries can add the economic value of data to their GDP calculations.

Brazil’s project stands out because it brings the private sector and the government together, “so it has a better chance of catching on,” said Kaiser.

In 2023, Brazil’s Congress drafted a bill that classifies data as personal property. The country’s current data protection law classifies data as a personal, inalienable right. The new legislation gives people full rights over their personal data — especially data created “through use and access of online platforms, apps, marketplaces, sites and devices of any kind connected to the web.”

The bill seeks to ensure companies offer their clients benefits and financial rewards, including payment as “compensation for the collecting, processing or sharing of data.” It has garnered bipartisan support, and is currently being evaluated in Congress.

The project “represents a significant conceptual transition,” a spokesperson for DrumWave told Rest of World. It positions Brazil “as a global reference in data ownership initiatives.” The spokesperson did not respond to questions about how it could potentially harm new and small businesses, as well as vulnerable socioeconomic groups.

If approved, the bill will allow companies to collect data more quickly and precisely, while giving users more clarity over how their data will be used, according to Antonielle Freitas, data protection officer at Viseu Advogados, a law firm that specializes in digital and consumer laws. As data collection becomes centralized through regulated data brokers, the government can benefit by paying the public to gather anonymized, large-scale data, Freitas told Rest of World.

These databases are the basis for more personalized public services, especially in sectors such as health care, urban transportation, public security, and education, she said.

But similar projects elsewhere are facing pushback: In the U.S., federal data privacy bills such as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (2022) and the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024 have stalled. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, the bills undermined laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (2020) that give users better protections for privacy violations.

“At a state level [in the U.S], there is pressure to not give up their own autonomy to federal institutions,” Victor Quintiere, a law professor at the University Center of Brasília, told Rest of World.

In Brazil, some like Maximilian Rodrigues are eager to try out the data monetization project. For Rodrigues, a computer science professor in Mato Grosso, in central Brazil, it will be an opportunity to regulate access to his data. “If you don’t accept bids, companies won’t be able to use your data,” he told Rest of World.

But not all users are as savvy. Inaf, Brazil’s institute for research on illiteracy, said last year that 95% of functionally illiterate Brazilians — three out of 10 Brazilians — had low digital proficiency. Large swaths of the country, including cities, have slow internet connectivity, which means they generate less data online. 

Data monetization could also pressure vulnerable people into forgoing their privacy for a quick payout, much like World (previously Worldcoin) has done in dozens of countries, according to Bastos. Co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, World scanned over 400,000 people’s irises in Brazil before the government suspended its operations in January for gathering data without sufficient opt-out mechanisms.

“Once you treat data as an economic asset, you are subverting the logic behind the protection of personal data,” said Bastos. The data ecosystem “will no longer be defined by who can create more trust and integrity in their relationships, but instead, it will be defined by who’s the richest.”