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.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday August 31 2015, @01:24PM
Personally, I've got some grand visions of the future modern and coming technologies could permit.
Unfortunately, more and more I'm finding the future I envision is one I'm gonna have to build for myself. We've got some great stuff in this open source freedom bubble, and if you just string it together you can build some truly amazing technology. But none of it ever seems to go mainstream. Instead we get these crippled, massively monetized corporate garbage heaps.
The future I want to see isn't one based on Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; it's based on Diaspora*, YaCy, and Linux. But people would rather sell their soul to Satan than learn the difference between The Internet and Internet Explorer...