Digital Data

1153 Words3 Pages

In today’s world, people tend to run majority of their daily errands through the internet. It is easy, convenient, and it saves a lot of time. In one hour someone can make a deposit in his personal bank account, order a medical prescription, pay bills, apply for a loan, get some shopping, and more. All it takes for a customer to be able to do this is having an account with each of this company’s websites. Creating an account is usually a very simple process where the person provides some information and creates a user name and a password to be able to return to the website. This information provided by the customer is called: digital data or digital information, which is simply any kind of information in digital format. Digital data can be public or private, it can be kept by the government, banks, medical providers, and other institutions; as well as a freely available in the internet in websites like myspace.com, facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

The use of digital data has increased over the years rapidly. Few years ago, the most significant piece of digital data, and sometimes the only one, a person used to have, was his credit report. It was available on the internet to financial institutions, which used it to determine if the individual was credit worthy or not. Today, we are part of a digital society, where digital data is created every day by people, sometimes without even realizing it. Now, our digital profile is not only a bunch of numbers in our credit report, it is a more logistical report, that contains personal information, professional history, previous events in our live, financial situation, etc. And like everything else, it can be used for legal purposes as well as some illegal ones.

Marketing companies are one example of a proper use of it. They acquire and utilize digital data to target specific markets. If for example they need a list of names and addresses of people between 23 and 36 years old, with a large amount of credit; they can obtain it from companies like ChoicePoint, firms dedicated specifically to identify, retrieve, storage, analyze, and deliver the data. (Choice Point, 2002-2008) These companies can provide more than databases, they offer information like background screenings, public records, copies of documents like birth certificates, business credentials, authentication and more. Law enforcement officers, potential employers, financial institutions, and even just regular people use it and find it very helpful.

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