Open Access

Personal user data is collected and processed at large scale by a handful of big providers of Internet services. This is detrimental to users, who often do not understand the privacy implications of this data collection, as well as to small parties interested in gaining insights from this data pool, e.g., research groups or small and middle-sized enterprises. To remedy this situation, we propose a transparent and user-controlled data market in which users can directly and consensually share their personal data with interested parties for monetary compensation. We define a simple model for such an ecosystem and identify pressing challenges arising within this model with respect to the user and data processor demands, legal obligations, and technological limits. We propose myneData as a conceptual architecture for a trusted online platform to overcome these challenges. Our work provides an initial investigation of the resulting myneData ecosystem as a foundation to subsequently realize our envisioned data market via the myneData platform.