Personal Data is a really interesting area and something I've only recently started working on. The problem is nicely described in the article<p>I'm not sure data-store companies are going to take off unless there's some specific thing they can offer to users e.g the Mint.com example is a good one.<p>Looking back now, Mint could have become the de-facto data-store since trusting a service with your bank details (highly-sensitive info) might have encouraged people to entrust them with even more data.
"Consumer information is worth billions in aggregate, but individually, the bits of data are worth practically nothing."<p>This speaks to an aggregation effect, similar to a (retail/commercial/non-investment) bank. Individual deposits aren't worth a lot to such banks, but the total aggregate deposits are much more valuable to them.