Big Data has become a secondary revenue stream for many businesses, in fact, a primary revenue stream for others. There is a complete eco-system for selling information about your customers, and to those companies who sell information, this is a gold mine.
Smart phone apps are some of the best ways to gather information about you. If you leave your GPS turned on in your phone, some apps, like Angry Birds, gather information about where you go. This information is processed and joined on different data points for the purposes of marketing to you based on your individual preferences.
Internet sites you browse may track information about you without your knowledge. It can be due to added features you have added to your browser, or features the web site has granted access.
Even merchant purchases may be used to profile you. Credit card transactions may be captured and profile specific points of information about you. Is it any wonder grocery stores give you a pretty good discount if you join their personal club. Your purchases are automatically associated with you because you provide that profile. They don’t give those discounts for free. They have an additional revenue stream in selling your information.
Can you imagine the awesome tools that are out there able to mine the vast amount of data, and to discover and make connections to identify you, building a very complete profile. For example, you may complete an online profile and choose to complete it using an Anonymous selection. You believe that you haven’t submitted any information that may identify you so that your selections are private. Think again; the web site tracks your IP address and may use that information from other data sources where you have identify yourself to associate that traffic with you. Granted, this may be more difficult on a shared computer.
I think it would be really cool to work for one of the data capture engines. To me it is a great example of how Big Data mining can be used. Lots of data in different forms may be mined to identify and establish relationships resulting in an amazingly complete profile.
Perhaps the relationships are not necessarily information you intend to make available. For example, if you pay for a prescription with a credit or debit card you are exposing your health information to a data miner. They can make two connections. The credit card associates the transaction with you. The medication your purchased is prescribed for a medical condition. Linking that medication with possible medical conditions they can begin to narrow down what issues you may have. Multiple medications allow them to further narrow down the potential condition.
Are you working in Big Data? Do you have to be some kind of generous to mine Big Data effectively? Share your thoughts by leaving your comments here.
Cheers,
Ben
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