Added: 26.11.2009 14:04
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Data Clouds – the endless registers of our lives

Increasing amount of personalized information is accessible through cloud mining.

As we surf in the Internet we leave a vast amount of personalized information behind us. This information can be collected easily and it could include particulars about your daily habits, your social networks, and detailed information about your route to work. The small pieces of information may seem unimportant but when collected together a sophisticated portrait of someone’s live might be built in front of you. All Internet users operate within the cloud – just imagine what your own private cloud looks like.

There are almost 3.3 billion mobile phones in the world and people are increasingly using them as a primary or secondary device to get online. Mobile phones and all GPS-enabled devices can be tracked by nearby towers, and as people carry their mobile phones along them, they make ideal tools to study the behaviour of the people. It won’t be long until your iPhone can act as your matchmaker and recommend that you should introduce yourself to someone standing nearby, who has lots in common with you.

It is obvious that business is interested in knowing more about consumers’ habits. Google is envisioning a future when it could advise people about suitable jobs and give activity hints for their days off. Understanding and predicting behaviour of the masses would also have significant advantages in areas like analyzing traffic patterns during rush hour, criminal intelligence, and disease control.

Online personal data is hardly controlled by the person it belongs to. This raises several questions about cloud security. For instance location-tracking technology can be used to learn more about consumer and employee behaviour – for example about communication styles within an organization. The new possibility enables new ways of abuse: location-tracking could easily be abused by employers, marketers, government as wells as criminals and stalkers.

Once the information is send via Internet, it is stored in cloud-based databases and it can be used in ways, which the sender didn’t intend. The problem is that the information stored in the cloud isn’t considered your private property. Along with the ever-expanding data clouds we have to define our political, social, and economic spheres once again.

References:

Orange, E. (2009). Mining information from the Data Clouds. The Futurist, 43(4), 17–21.

Opportunity: Businesses can target their marketing more effectively

Threat: Personal data security

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