It has hit the news on many an occasion recently about top secret data being left on trains here in the UK. It was a major fiasco, and the publicity around it was amazing. Thousands and thousands of personal details of British citizens were left on a disc. We can only hope that whoever has it is not malicious, and evil, because the disc title could very easily be ‘Identity Theft 101′.

Data comes in many forms, and data can pretty much be anything. In the modern day and age, most data is based on or around technology. I myself work directly with data. I have to convert data in paper form to data in an electronic form, and I get paid for this !

There is a significant market for data. Companies go around collating and collecting data, and it can be an amazing marketting tool well worth paying for. If for example you are trying to sell cars in the current climate, it would be well worth getting ahold of a list of people without a car, who are looking for cars, and only contacting them. I am not sure of the legalities of doing such a thing, but if it is allowed, think of the money saved from simply not contacting people who clearly will not be interested.

The domain whois database is the subject of much debate. Should it be public, should you have to pay for access etc. The Domain Whois Lookup service offered by GUA.com is the engine behind our Domain Name History tool. Without data our history tool is pretty pointless. I am intending to do a large volume of whois searches so that our history service actually has some data. So far people do not seem interested or motivated to use the tool BECAUSE of its lack of data.

On the subject of domain names. I make money from domain names. They are vital for websites. Having a good domain is one of the most important factors in developing a website. If the whois database were not public, the business would be destroyed. No-one would know who owned what, and a state of disarray would ensue.

Namebio.com is a resource I use regulalry. It contains data of past domain sales, and has earned/saved me a lot of money. I was in an auction for predator.net, and it was namebios previous sales data that informed me that my original valuation was insane.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, a sale I created at dnforum cost me thousands of dollars because my buyer proceeded to scan google for data about the domain, and found that I had offered it for significantly less in the past.

Now data is a very loose term. If you write a word document, that is data. If you write on a piece of paper, that is data. Even fingerprints can be considered data. Data is present, and is used in most aspects of everything we do. When you spend hours on a speech, and windows crashes you are devestated, I have even known people to cry in such situations.

In answer to the question, data is VERY valuable. Look at the facts ! Perhaps even look at data as to how much data has sold for?
What we need to watch out for is that we keep data in the right hands, otherwise data can be a killer.