Data Mining Case Study

Data Mining and Consumers’ Information
Since both consumers and businesses advantage from the use of data mining, each party has to honour the right of the other one in order to keep an ethical function of the data mining relationship between the two of them. Long ago, data mining was only about essential and voluntary information collected from customers who were aware that their information is being gathered. Nowadays, the ethical issues raised are whether the data collected will be used against customers’ rights, and whether it will become a part that is accessible in the future by others. The strategies proposed by Payne and Trumbach, with regard to Data mining(1) and consumers’ information, propose that in the right moral structure, data mining can be ethically effective and protective to consumers’ right. Six principals are needed for a productive ethical data mining strategy: anonymity, disclosure, choice, time limits, trust and accuracy of data (Payne & Trumbach, 2009).
First, let’s discuss the issue of data mining and anonymity. This principle is based on the idea of limiting personal identifying data. It argues that to have an ethical data mining, customers should be allowed to be anonymous whenever they have the chance. For instance, a client can purchase an online order only by using a username, password and zip code (Danna & Gandy, 2002). Therefore, this client will get the same exact service like anyone else without disclose his/ her personal identity. This strategy is effective and helpful since it protects the customer from unwanted exposure, and at the same time, serves his needs by giving him/ her same shopping experience as any other client. On the other hand, some people might argue that in some situation, a...

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...them make the best choice in terms of their personal data. Fourth issue is data mining and time line that contains how long consumer personal information will be used. The next issue is about basic, guarded and extended trust. This strategy ethically guards the costumer from any damage caused by disclosure since it requests not to misuse the consumers’ trust. It also assists the relationship among parties that work together explicitly. The last issue discussed is the ethical principle of accuracy in data mining. Ethical data mining requires serving consumers as individuals and not to rob them from accurate service because of an unfitting clumping system used by the firm. To sum up, all the previous six principles work ethically well together successfully to serve the consumers’ needs, to protect their rights of privacy, and to give them the best costumers’ services.