In March, a Dutch student called Shawn Buckles placed his personal data on the market. He offered to hand over all of his most intimate electronic matter—e-mails, health records, calendars, geolocational data—to the highest bidder. By mid-April, Buckles had received 53 offers. The winner of the auction was The Next Web, a popular site for technology news. It shelled out $480 for his data soul.