> I can't sue Home Depot for giving up my credit card info to hackers unless I can prove that it led to someone running up my credit card bill.

It's funny how personal data is so clearly valuable - if it weren't companies wouldn't spend resources to hang on to it - and yet that value is so hard to define.

I wonder if it would be helpful if personal information were treated like some kind of intellectual property which could be licensed out, and there were some kind of market for doing so. If a company leaked my data I could sue them like a record company suing individuals who share music files.

Of course, any one individual might not be able to make much money by selling access to their data. It's just a thought.