Big Data: ‘Mined’ My Business?

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Imagine someone told you that every bit of personal information you have exchanged with an individual or company through any digital interface such as the internet, cell phone, GPS devices, and electronic payment systems has been piled upon millions of other people’s personal information in datasets that are unfathomably large and incomprehensible to any human mind. Would you believe it? What if the same individual continued to tell you that these data sets are “mined” using complex algorithms to discover subtle patterns, correlations, and relationships among citizens? That may sound pretty far-fetched. You may be astonished to learn just how real this data collection is, and the extent to which the compiled information is being used for business tactics in all parts of the world.
“Big Data” is the unofficial term used to describe predictive analytics: the collecting, storing, and analyzing large volumes of data. The name Big Data began in the recent years due to the constantly growing abundance of data and the ability to mine the data much more efficiently using computer algorithms. This modern version of predictive analytics has resulted in the creation of the data analysis industry; an industry that is worth billions of dollars each year and continues to grow despite the ethical issues beginning to plague the technological practice.
Ethical dilemmas emerged with the realization that such data collections pose a threat of personal information becoming disclosed for more damaging but subtle effects on economies and individuals, such as misuse of data for personal agendas and creation of erroneous information. Despite its complexity, data mining is a technology that is very agile and can be recruited for a variety of tasks, be...

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