The true cost of electronic payment cards

Recently Octopus Rewards Limited(Maker of recharageable smart card in Hong Kong) has been under scrutiny for violating privacy principles. They collected customers' personal data through Octopus cards and sold them for profit while customers were unaware of it.

Here's a movie about the Octopus cards:




Here's news clip of the scandal:


Despite its popularity, customers used Octopus cards and its rewards program without finding out its true costs. Now that Hong Kong government and its people are aware of the scandal, it will be interesting to see if Octopus's value proposition still holds after customers find out its true cost. What do you think?