In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about how much your personal data is worth, privacy happenings on Capitol Hill, and whether we’re addicted to our smartphones.

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Your Personal Data is Worth One Cent (But Actually Way More)

We’ve said that personal data is valuable to marketers, but, oddly enough, it’s also cheap. This report from Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill analyzes how much money the personal data aggregator Rapleaf charges for certain pieces of information. The stats are eye-opening and, frankly, galling. Rapleaf charges as little as one cent for some of your personal information, including your income, marital status, and information on your credit card. Only slightly more expensive is information on your cell phone.

Of course, what goes unsaid is that these companies can sell and resell the data 10,000 times over. The actual lifetime value of a single piece of data can be worth thousands of dollars, which is why personal data aggregators can sell this data so cheaply and still be profitable.

Security Breaches Compel Legislative Action on Privacy

This article from BusinessWeek discusses the numerous legislative proposals on Internet privacy reform floating around Congress and how recent data breaches have accelerated the issue in importance. Quoting the article, “A consensus has formed in Washington that the patchwork of federal and state privacy laws has not kept pace with the development of the Internet. The U.S. lags Europe, where broad safeguards of personal digital information have been in place since 1995.” What shape Internet reform takes is still up in the air, but at this point, some kind of legislation seems like a formality.

Future of Privacy Forum Finds Nearly Three-Quarters of Mobile Apps Lack Privacy Policies

According to a Future of Privacy Forum analysis, nearly 75% of downloaded mobile apps lack privacy policies. The FPF did an analysis of “the top 30 paid mobile apps across the leading operating systems (iOS, Android, & Blackberry) and discovered that out of the top 30 applications, 22 of them — nearly three-quarters– lacked even a basic privacy policy.” Non-existent or unclear privacy policies are one of the big targets in pending Internet privacy legislation and are widely considered to contribute to data breaches and other security issues.

U.K. Judge Specifically Bans Social Media in Injunction Case

The efficacy of the U.K.’s so-called “super-injunction,” which prohibits the publication of any information deemed damaging to an individual or corporation, has been put to the test in the courts after anonymous users on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook began routinely breaking the injunctions. According to the Guardian, “a high court judge has issued an injunction which for the first time explicitly bans publication of information on Twitter and Facebook,” meaning that, if the anonymous individuals were discovered, they could be charged with a crime and possibly jailed. Interestingly, however, because Twitter and Facebook are American companies, it’s unclear whether or not U.K. courts could compel the to give up a user’s identity.

One-Third of Smartphone Users Load Apps Before Getting Out of Bed

According to a new survey featured on Mashable.com, over one-third of smartphone users (35%) load an app on their phone before getting out of bed for the day. Given how smartphones and smartphone apps have been linked to personal privacy concerns, this is an interesting piece of news. As a culture, we seem to be on our phones literally all day.