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from the I-wonder-if-they-track-sales-of-tin-foil? dept.
http://www.cio.com/article/2977027/intel-reveals-big-datas-dirty-little-secret.html
The article is entitled "Intel reveals big data's dirty little secret" but I read it a little bit differently.
From the article: "Companies are spending billions on tools and engineering to analyse big data, though many are hampered by one little problem: they still don't know what to do with all the data they collect."
This means that, of all the egregious breaches of personal privacy that companies regularly perform (the Target-knows-you're-pregnant-when-your-parents-don't story comes to mind), they have still only scratched the surface of making sense of your information, and using it effectively. Which means that, as Big Data gets people who actually know what they're doing, the more frightening the possibilities become, which is probably only a matter of time.
How would you feel about getting a bunch of targeted spam from divorce lawyers because your wife/husband's personal details were in the big Ashley Madison data leak, before you even heard about it? What if you were the guy who got drunk and put a profile up one time after a big fight but never followed up on it? This is why I don't have a Facebook account.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:40PM
I'm not saying there are not uses for big data, there are. But just as with any data collection you have to do a lot of work to make sure you are actually gathering needed data that you can somehow use for something interesting. A lot of these big data projects seem to start in the wrong end of things. Normally one would start with the idea or the question and then gather data, they start with gathering (or a giant pile of previously collected data) and then they wonder if they can do something interesting with what they got. Sometime they can, no doubt about that - but they also will end with a lot of shit data that is just wasting space.
I'm not overly familiar with the Target case but I a quick scan seems to indicate that it's millions of records of sales, CC numbers and personal information from the customers etc. No doubt interesting things could be done with that. You can always find interesting cases, I was making more of a general statement.