The working
Methodology & sources.
An appraisal is only as honest as its working. This page shows every figure the calculator uses, where it comes from, how derived numbers were derived, and what we refuse to pretend to know. Figures as of August 2026, covering fiscal-year 2025 and first-half 2026 data.
Principles
- Ranges, never point values. Anyone quoting your data's worth to the cent is selling something. Every output is a low–high band.
- Reported beats derived beats estimated. Each platform figure is labelled: reported comes from company filings; derived divides reported revenue by public user counts; anything else is an analyst estimate and says so.
- Three markets stay separate. Yearly ad revenue, per-sale broker pennies and conditional breach prices measure different things. We never sum them.
- Everything updateable. All figures live in one data file with this page as its changelog. If a number is stale, it gets fixed or removed, not defended.
Habitat I — the ad market
Platforms report average revenue per user (ARPU): total revenue divided by active users, the cleanest public measure of what one user's attention and data earn. The appraisal takes your region's annual ARPU band for each platform you mark, scales it by usage, and sums across platforms.
ad value / year = Σ ( regional ARPU band × usage multiplier )
usage multiplier: light ×0.6 · typical ×1.0 · heavy ×1.4
The usage multiplier is a deliberate simplification: ad impressions rise roughly with time spent, and ARPU describes the average user, so light and heavy users bracket it. It is linear and coarse — treat the result as an order-of-magnitude band, not a bill.
| Platform | US/Canada | Europe/UK | Asia-Pacific | Rest of world | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | $250–300 | $72–92 | $22–28 | $15–19 | reported |
| $430–590 | $100–175 | $16–38 | $11–27 | derived | |
| TikTok | $70–100 | $25–45 | $8–20 | $5–15 | estimate |
| Amazon | $120–250 | $40–100 | $10–40 | $5–25 | derived |
| $30–62 | $15–40 | $8–20 | $5–15 | derived | |
| Snapchat | $36–42 | $10–14 | $3–6 | $3–6 | reported |
| $32–48 | $11–20 | $4–10 | $4–10 | derived | |
| $30–35 | $9–15 | $1–4 | $1–4 | reported | |
| X (Twitter) | $15–30 | $5–10 | $2–5 | $2–5 | estimate |
| Spotify (free) | $6–10 | $4–8 | $2–4 | $1–3 | derived |
Where those bands come from
- Meta — FY2025 results: worldwide average revenue per person $57.03. Last reported regional annual ARPU (FY2024): US & Canada $233.42, Europe $68.12, Asia-Pacific $21.28, Rest of World ≈ $14. Bands scale those reported regionals by FY2025's ~15% worldwide growth plus H1 2026: Q2 2026 revenue was $60.8B, up 28% year over year on roughly 7% user growth. Source: Meta Platforms 10-K filings and quarterly earnings (investor.atmeta.com).
- Google. Alphabet's trailing-year ad revenue reached roughly $325B as of Q2 2026 ($81.6B in that quarter alone, up 14.5%; $63.3B Search, $11.1B YouTube), with 48% of revenue from the US, 29% EMEA, 17% APAC (Alphabet earnings releases / 10-K). We divide regional ad revenue by ITU regional internet-user counts. Example, US: 48% × $325B ≈ $156B ÷ ~290M US internet users ≈ $538/year — hence the $430–590 band. EMEA mixes Europe with lower-ARPU regions, so the Europe band sits above the raw EMEA average and below US levels.
- TikTok — ByteDance is private. Analyst estimates put 2025 global ad revenue near $33B and US ad spend at ~$11.8B across ~136M US users ≈ $87/user (eMarketer, DemandSage). Estimate, labelled as such.
- Amazon — FY2025 advertising revenue $68B (Q4 alone $21.3B). Amazon does not disclose active customer counts, so the per-shopper band is wide by design; it covers only the ads business built on your purchase history, not retail margin.
- LinkedIn. FY2025 revenue >$17B across ~1.2B members ≈ $14.87/member, concentrated in ~310M monthly actives ≈ $62/MAU (Microsoft filings, Business of Apps). Includes hiring/subscription revenue — LinkedIn monetizes your profile through recruiters, not just ads.
- Snap — FY2025 reported: North America ARPU $36.82, global $12.61; Q2 2026 global ARPU $3.25/quarter with revenue up 9%. Regional bands follow Snap's quarterly disclosures.
- Reddit — Q4 2025 global ARPU $5.98/quarter, +42% YoY; Q2 2026 revenue guided to ~$720M/quarter. The US runs roughly 2× global in Reddit's reported split. Derived.
- Pinterest — FY2025 reported: US & Canada ARPU $30.84, global $7.21; Q2 2026 revenue up 18% on a record 640M monthly actives (global ARPU $1.86/quarter).
- X — private since 2022. eMarketer estimates 2025 global ad revenue ~$2.26B, US ~$1.31B across ~56M US users ≈ $23/user. Estimate.
- Spotify free tier — ad-supported revenue ~€1.9B across ~430M ad-supported users ≈ $4.7/user globally; regional bands follow ad-market CPM spreads. Subscriptions are excluded: paying for a product is not a data trade.
What ARPU is not: it is not "the price of your data file." It is what your attention, targeted using your data, earns the platform. That distinction is the point of showing three markets.
Habitat II — the broker market
List and data brokers sell your actual record. The most detailed public pricing remains the Financial Times' 2013 broker rate-card investigation — the industry has not published rate cards since, which itself tells you something. We use those published per-record prices as the historic floor and widen each band upward against current industry reporting. This lens is labelled historic basis throughout.
broker value / list sale = base record + Σ ( marked segment bands )
| Record / segment | Band (per record) | Anchor |
|---|---|---|
| Basic record (name, address, email, phone) | $0.001–0.01 | bulk records trade at fractions of a cent (~$0.0005/person published) |
| Demographics | $0.002–0.02 | standard appends price near the base record |
| Homeowner / property | $0.05–0.20 | ~$0.10 published premium |
| Income / net-worth model | $0.05–0.25 | wealth models are premium appends |
| New / expecting parent | $0.10–0.35 | ~$0.11/name published — top life-event segment |
| Engaged / newlywed | $0.05–0.20 | life-event premium |
| Health-condition interest | $0.10–0.50 | ~$0.26/name published for ailment lists |
| In-market car buyer | $0.10–0.30 | short-lived intender flags command premiums |
| Frequent traveler | $0.05–0.20 | standard intent append |
| Fitness & wellness buyer | $0.03–0.15 | lifestyle segment, low-mid rate |
| Precise location history | $0.10–0.60 | location brokers price per device-month |
| Purchase / transaction history | $0.10–0.40 | card-network-derived segments are premium |
The context line on the broker observation (consumer databases earn roughly $5–7 per year per individual held; Acxiom alone maintains up to ~11,000 attributes on ~2.5 billion people) comes from industry analyses of the data-broker sector, a market estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The pennies are per sale; the business is the repetition.
Habitat III — the black market
Dark-web marketplaces publish asking prices like any market. Ranges below are consolidated from 2025–26 monitoring reports: DeepStrike's dark-web pricing research (2025), the PrivacySharks dark-web price index (2026), Packetlabs' pricing surveys, and healthcare-breach research putting medical records at $260–310 each. The appraisal sums the asking-price bands for what you hold.
black-market value = Σ ( marked holding bands ) — conditional on a breach
| Item | Asking price |
|---|---|
| Online banking login | $200–1,000+ |
| Medical records | $260–310 |
| Crypto exchange account | $100–400 |
| Full identity kit (“fullz”) | $20–100 |
| Primary email account | $40–120 |
| PayPal / payment-app login | $30–200 |
| Social media account | $20–80 |
| Credit card with CVV | $10–40 |
| Passport / ID scan | $10–60 |
| National ID / SSN alone | $1–6 |
| Streaming subscriptions | $1–10 |
Read this lens carefully: these are marketplace asking prices for stolen goods, not a prediction that you will be breached, and not your loss — fraud losses to victims typically far exceed what the record sold for. The lens exists because it ranks your protection priorities better than fear does: the bank login and the medical file are worth guarding hardest.
What this appraisal is not
- Not a personal valuation service. No one can price you individually without your actual records — and we don't want your actual records.
- Not financial or legal advice. It's editorial analysis of public market data.
- Not a prediction. Especially the black-market lens — it prices risk, it doesn't forecast it.
Sources
- Meta Platforms — 10-K FY2025 & FY2024, quarterly earnings presentations (investor.atmeta.com)
- Alphabet — Q4 & FY2025 earnings release, Form 10-K FY2025 (abc.xyz/investor)
- Snap Inc.: 10-K FY2025. Pinterest Inc.: 10-Q/10-K FY2025. Reddit Inc.: 10-Q FY2025, Q4 2025 results
- Microsoft — FY2025 filings (LinkedIn segment); Business of Apps LinkedIn statistics
- eMarketer — TikTok and X US ad-revenue forecasts 2025; DemandSage TikTok ad revenue by country
- Amazon — FY2025 results, advertising services revenue
- Financial Times — “How much is your personal data worth?” broker rate-card investigation (2013)
- DeepStrike: Dark Web Data Pricing 2025. PrivacySharks: Dark Web Price Index 2026. Packetlabs: dark-web pricing surveys. Healthcare data-breach pricing research (2025)
- ITU — regional internet-user statistics (for per-user derivations)
Update log
2026-08-31: v3 — the field-guide redesign. Light canvas only (dark scheme retired on purpose), self-hosted OFL type, every figure and source unchanged. The legacy /how-much-is-my-data-worth/ path now redirects home.
2026-08-07: August review, on schedule. Q2 2026 earnings folded in: Meta bands raised on +28% revenue growth; Google recomputed on ~$325B trailing-year ad revenue; Snap, Pinterest and Reddit nudged on reported quarters. TikTok, Amazon, LinkedIn, X and Spotify unchanged (no new disclosures). Broker and dark-web lenses unchanged.
2026-07-18: V2. Per-platform listing pages (the collection) with regional tables and controls; ten-year horizon on the ad-market observation (linear, flat-rate, deliberately conservative); the shareable plate; anonymous same-server page counter (page name + date only, disclosed in privacy).
2026-07: First edition. FY2025 platform figures; 2025–26 dark-web indexes; broker bands on FT-2013 historic basis.
Next scheduled review: after Q3 2026 platform earnings (late October 2026). Platform pages update together with this table, from the same data file.