Data Mining: The new gold rush or old hat?

Since the recent revelations by the former, now infamous, NSA subcontractor Snowden regarding how the NSA collects and processes data about American citizens, we seem to have a new respect for data mining. While shocking, this should not come as a surprise to any of us, as we have become willing participants in this process for years.

You might be asking yourself, ‘what in the hell is he talking about’ and, if you’re not in the business of data processing, you might not know just exactly how much you have been compromising your own personal data, possibly for years. Just think about it, look through your wallet, pocketbook or key chain and see how many ‘customer rewards’ cards you have, MVP, VIP, PREFERRED, the names sound important, and they are for the companies that issue them. But for every one of those cards you possess, you have willingly given those companies much more data that the NSA has access to without getting a warrant.

“What?” you say.

A valid question, but if you read the Terms of Service agreements that you sign to get these ‘benefits’, then you will know that they can use your personal data however they see fit, in some cases even selling it to other corporations. So we are in an uproar about the NSA collecting a miniscule amount of data without our permission and claim our civil liberties are being violated, all the while we freely give away very specific personal data because we think we are getting some kind of reward in this exchange. Irony at its best!

The corporations, in which you willingly give your personal data, use this data every day to help ‘personalize’ your experience with their company. And while that is true in a small respect, what they are really doing is tracking your purchase trends and designing complex ad campaigns specifically designed for you. Don’t believe me? Well you can try this for yourself.

I just happen to shop at Food Lion a lot (it’s close to me, so I’m not picking on them, because all chain stores do this) and when I check out and use my MVP card (or, if I forget my card, I can just use my phone number!) and most of the time I will get a handful of coupons. Now these aren’t just random coupons, these are designed specifically for me based off my past purchases. You might say this is a good thing, but it’s a little slyer than that because I don’t get coupons for the actual things I buy (brand specific), instead I get coupons for similar products, most of the time from another brand. See how that works? Targeted advertising from the personal information that I willingly traded for this ‘benefit’. Food Lion has even went a step further in this process, by ‘allowing’ you to scan your card upon entry to the store, then spitting out the same kinds of coupons I mentioned, thereby influencing you purchasing decisions before you even start shopping!

And this is just one small example, from a relatively small company. Now imagine this same scenario going on with all of your online shopping accounts, not to mention free email accounts (i.e. Goggle’s Gmail) and all of the social media sites that harvest our data on a scale that would probably frighten you just as much as the NSA.

This scenario is the dichotomy of the uninformed ‘consumer’ (a term which I have despised since I was a small boy because it alludes to the fact that all I do is consume and not produce) and uninformed citizen. So before you get all bent out of shape about what the government is doing to collect your data, you should first look inwardly and ask yourself what kind of information you are giving away without a second thought for a little savings, convenience and/or social interaction.

I am not saying that we should not scrutinize what and how our government is collecting data on us, the citizenry, I am just pointing out the fact that we give away a lot more of our personal information if we believe we’re going to get something out of the deal. It’s a classic instance of greed versus civil responsibility; in other words, don’t play on both sides of the fence if you don’t want to get caught in the middle.

Want to know more about how the NSA analyzes the data it collects?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/evil_in_a_haystack_nsa_metadata

And there is this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?pagewanted=all&_r=3&