More often than not, signing up for an app or online service involves sharing varying amounts of information about yourself, such as your email address or phone number. It has been said that, despite the fact that most people hate sharing their information with companies, people choose to do so because they know they’ll be getting something out of it. According to a recent study, however, this isn’t the case, and the reasoning is a bit more depressing. 

Should consumers be able to control how companies collect and use their personal data? At a dinner honoring privacy advocates this week in Washington, Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, gave a speech in which he endorsed this simple idea. Yet his argument leveled a direct challenge to the premise behind much of the Internet industry — the proposition that people blithely cede their digital bread crumbs to companies in exchange for free or reduced-priced services subsidized by advertising. “You might like these so-called free services,” Mr. Cook said during the event held by EPIC, a nonprofit research center. “But we don’t think they’re worth having your email or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose.”