Data Mining is a powerful tool that is designed to gather large sets of data at incredible speed and analyze them. Most companies use this tool to better understand their customer’s habits as well as their interests. Advertisers love this tool because it allows unprecedented amount of access to information. Most people are unaware that their data is being mined, bundled, and sold by a company to third party advertisers in order to make targeted ads more effective. This is a problematic practice because users are unaware that in most social media sites such as Facebook, this tool is used (Jessica Reyman “User Data on the Social Web: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation”). Hidden deep into most terms of service is the right to sell and mine your information to third parties, because most people are unaware that this is the status quo of how social media and other sites make their money. It presents a potential privacy concern for users because they did not consciously consent to have their user information mined and sold. Data mining itself is a power tool in advertising, however does question is does the use and creation of Data mining algorithms have the potential to lead to privacy violations when it is used to create targeted advertisements? Facebook is a social media site that boasts 500 million users worldwide making this company one of the largest social media sites in the world. Facebook has had a myriad of its own controversies concerning how it addresses its users’ privacy. One such instance is how its’ terms of service (terms of service is what the user agrees to in order to use the service) is written in confusing legal jargon as many other sites in order to protect the owner’s rights. The section that has caused t... ... middle of paper ... ...are of the consequences of the terms of agreement that they are checking. The consumer believes that only simple data is being kept and used by the company. They are unaware that through the sophisticated use of data mining very personal information is being shared with numerous companies. Each company causes further layers of information to be mined and shared, thereby truly breaching a consumer’s level of confidentiality. Bibliography Reyman, Jessica. "User Data on the Social Web: Authorship, Agency, and Appropriation." College English 75.5 (2013): 513-33. Konopnicki, D. "A Statistical Approach To Mining Customers' Conversational Data from Social Media." IBM Journal of Research and Development 57.3/4 (2013): 1-13 Soriano, Jacopo, Timothy Au, and David Banks. "Text Mining in Computational Advertising." Statistical Analysis and Data Mining
Using the informal tone he enhances his argument by providing several thought-provoking statements that allow the reader to see the logic in the article, “Social media is designed for the information shared on it to be searched, and shared- and mined for profit… When considering what to share via social media, don 't think business vs. personal. Think public vs. private. And if something is truly private, do not share it on social media out of a misplaced faith in the expectation of privacy” (134). The reader should agree with Edmond that when posting or being a part of the social media bandwagon, you’re life and decisions will be up for display. Moreover, the business vs. personal and public vs. private point is accurate and logical, because evidently if you post something on any social media outlet you should expect that anyone and everyone can see it, regardless of your privacy settings. Edmond highlights that Facebook along with other social networking sites change their privacy settings whenever they please without
..., websites and online marketers do find ways around users’ precautions to gain personal information. There are many people out there who want to use personal information like credit card numbers or addresses to cause harm to others. These cases are the extremely negative ones that people want to and should avoid. The case of companies and third parties tracking browsing history and other information for advertising purposes hover over a finer line between good and bad. For some people, tracking can be considered convenient in terms of shopping for what they are interested in, and others may be uncomfortable with the thought of being tracked without knowing. As stated in the beginning, complete privacy is unlikely, but being informed about the tactics of the Internet can help one protect themselves and others in their care to be as careful and private as possible.
... obligation to its ethics or privacy concerns, which is apparent because the usage rate of such methods is rapidly increasing. Because marketing executives are utilizing a more effective campaign and increasing sales, they fail to properly respond to the campaign’s violations to natural human rights.
Facebook : Every single day we read the news ,and think that Facebook might be antiprivacy. It is also observed that people often think that social networking sites offer complicated privacy settings. The CEO...
Smith, Aaron and Joanna Brenner. “Twitter Use 2012.” PewResearch Internet Project. 1-3. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Hargittai, Eszter and Boyd, Dana. “Facebook Privacy settings: Who cares?” First Monday 15.8 (2010): 12-20.
As a result, Web site operators or companies are able to build very detailed profiles from that behavior (Green 48). These profiles play a major role in online marketing. In the past, marketers knew their customers just as a number, but when DoubleClick, an Internet advertising company, bought out Abacus Direct, DoubleClick was able to combine its databases with the names and addresses form Abacus’ catalog customers. Now web surfers can no longer surf the net without their computers being tagged to their names. (Quinn 63) Even more disturbing, hackers can now intercept the data from the cookie.
Even though cookies serve an important role in today’s e-commerce and advertising industries, it is impossible not to think of them as a breach in user security. There is something about a seemingly forced piece of information being saved on your computer for the use of a computer hundreds or even thousands of miles away. One can only think of one word. Privacy. Who’s to say that company’s are using the information gathered by these cookies and using them for good. How do I know that you are collecting cookies for your own advertising or e-commercial purposes rather than probing me as a candidate for the ever-present adware? Do I want vendors to know exactly what it is I usually shop for when I get online? Do I really need to save my shopping time by one or two clicks with the sacrifice of decreased privacy? These are questions that each user asks themselves when we look at our internet security settings or when we are denied access to a site based on our cookie settings. Many companies have been labeled with improper actions concerning cookies. A company named DoubleClick was forced to reach a settlement in 2002 for improper conduct concerning cookies.
Today, many web sites on the internet can use "cookies" to keep track of passwords and usernames and track the sites a particular user visits (Cookiecentral.com). But, the use of cookies to track user's browsing habits is becoming a concern of many internet users. These concerned people are beginning to think of cookies as an invasion of privacy. Companies with web sites can use cookies to track what sites you visit frequently and then select specific ad banners to send to you on the web while surfing (Cookiecentral.com). Electronic Frontier Foundation's program director, Stanton McCandlish points out, "The potential problem is that companies without a sense of ethics could be doing [the] same thing and selling addresses to offline marketers" (news.cnet.com). The government should realize the hazards of internet cookies and enforce a ban on their use.
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).
In a world of Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and OKCupid and Google and IPhones and Ipads and Kindles and all the other hundreds of sites and devices designed to garner personal information, data-mine your information, to better advertise, sell, inform, and connect you with the people or the places that you want to experience. The wonderful world of the Internet helps connect millions of people with millions of other people in milliseconds all day, every day. All the swapping and sharing of information create a world of transparency, deception, fraud, and identity confusion. Avatars, aliases, and profiles are the ways most people advertise their goods and services and themselves. With this consideration an erosion of privacy has changed our culture in ways that some predicted years ago and some that are new to our era. This paper will explore some primary regarding how technology causes the changes in privacy and what are the effects brought on by these changes.
What is privacy? Google defines privacy as the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. But is that everyone’s definition of privacy? Definitely not. The issue about privacy and how online social networks leak personal information is constantly being debated by writers. The articles “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life” by Jon Ronson, “What ‘Public’ means Now” by Clay Shirky, “Why Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Matter” by John C. Dvorak, and “Privacy and Social Media” by Theodore F. Claypoole all argue about the what the main issue is with online privacy. Is it Facebook’s fault, the internet’s fault, or an individual’s fault? Each person thinks that it is something different which is why this issue has yet to be solved. With personal information becoming more and more public each day, everyone agrees that there is an issue with online privacy. However, a solution would emerge much quicker if everyone debating the issue agreed on who
The growing popularity of information technologies has significantly altered our world, and in particular, the way people interact. Social networking websites are becoming one of the primary forms of communication used by people of all ages and backgrounds. No doubt, we have seen numerous benefits from the impact of social media communication: We can easily meet and stay in touch with people, promote ourselves, and readily find information. However, these changes prompt us to consider how our moral and political values can be threatened. One common fear among users is that their privacy will be violated on the web. In her book, Privacy in Context, Helen Nissenbaum suggests a framework for understanding privacy concerns online. She focuses particularly on monitoring and tracking, and how four “pivotal transformations” caused by technology can endanger the privacy of our personal information. One website that may pose such a threat is Facebook.
In today’s world people have become way to comfortable using social networking sites. People will post comments online that they would not say in person. The crude, foul, and vulgar language people post on their profiles has become costly. Posts have gone as far as to having people being fired from their jobs, to colleges not accepting a student. The opposition would say that they have set their privacy settings on their profile, which only allow the one’s they want to have access to their profile. Therefore, they have no need to worry about what they post, because businesses or colleges have no way of viewing their profile. The oppositions point is not wrong, but it also is not all correct. Privacy settings are available for Facebook and Myspace users to allow them to limit what can be seen by the public. It is not possible to hide everything one may have on their profile. Danah Boyd, an anthropologist and social – networking expert at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that “Information is not private because no one k...
Consequently, upcoming problems surrounding online privacy will continue to rise and become harder to stop, the faster new technologies and social media persist and adapt. It is imperative that social media outlets, such as Facebook, battling privacy problems do not only focus on protecting vulnerable young people against the common mistreatment of personal information. “Protection of teens is a parental responsibility. But the education of teens and their parents to the growing privacy problem will require an educational effort that involves schools, social networking organizations, and government agencies” (Barnes, 2006).