It's been done for about a generation or two, and that's what people don't seem to realize.

In the early aughts I was sitting in on privacy discussions that reluctantly acknowledged that regardless of what we do online, surveys showed you could offer someone at the mall a free Snickers and they'd fill out the whole form.

The perceived cost to the individual of divulging their personal data is near zero; dangling nearly any incentive in front of them will induce them to let it go. And that's not a new phenomenon.