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The fact that competition laws are being enforced in the online service market, including the recent international investigations on the recent privacy breaches of Google, a leading Internet portal, demonstrates the importance of personal information in the digital age. For example, Internet portal carriers like Google are largely dependent on online advertising revenue, and in such online advertising, stored data such as personal information plays an important role in improving the quality of services and making access to users more attractive.

In most markets in today’s economy and online advertising service markets, companies rely on vast amounts of personal information to develop services, and in effect digitalization of personal information is constantly creating new types of business models. Personal information itself is the foundation of the service. Along with the development of services based on personal information, it is difficult to grasp the extent to which personal information businesses collect and take advantage of such information.

Internet users access the Internet portal to use digital services such as e-mail or search engines that are provided free of charge. Why Internet portal providers offer free online services? Individuals provide their valuable personal data in exchange for the digital services.