The Forrester research group has reported that consumers may have more control over their personal information that has been use by many websites. With the help of “personal data lockers,” people mandate to whom or what can see on their data instead of having their data gathered and sold without their knowledge.

This possible change is an advance following a number of high-profile cases that have shed light on how consumer data is stored, sold and used.

For instance, last April, files owned by Epsilon were being accessed by hackers.  Epsilon is an online marketing group that manages consumer email lists owned by various companies such as Best buy, Citigroup and other major companies in U.S.A.

“Most consumers had never heard of Epsilon and revolted against the fact that a company they didn’t know had access to their data,” Forrester writes.

The change to what Forrester calls “personal data management” could have an effect on the multi-billion dollar industry of selling data, such as email addresses and health care history.

Report says companies and groups who will spend above $2 billion on a third-party data on individuals.  Businesses use this data to improve marketing efforts, create loyalty programs and deliver new products.

Under the system that Forrester analysts visualize, a customer could have multiple lockers to manage and maintain their own data.   For example, the first locker only contains health-related data for sharing with doctors and insurers, and the second contains financial data.  Data companies could create portals through which users manage their data and approve requests from businesses.

“Facebook is pushing the edge of what people are prepared to do with data,” Khatibloo said, noting that users are becoming increasingly familiar with privacy statements and actively sharing and hiding their information depending on the context.

According to reports, large online businesses like Amazon could become the “de facto behavioral data locker for most consumers,” because of the troves of consumer data they already store.

It’s important for consumers to recognize what they’re contributing to the amassing data traversing the world and its globalized, digitized economy.  Here we look at the cost of your digital life, outlined in an infographic published by Trend Micro.  As consumers better utilize their personal data for their needs, security and management tools will sprout out of an industry development that requires increased levels of control over consumer data.