The Ethical Concerns with Data Mining Essay

These extremely large data sets may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations relating to human behavior and interaction. These analysesaffect us on day to day basis positively and negatively and the legality of how this information is collected and the laws that apply may be unclear. Both with or without users' knowledge, consumer personal data is collected from every daily, digital activity; from purchases, web searches, amazon searches, browsing history, and phone use. This data is generated, and then downloaded and stored. [15] Companies can then use this data to create "data sets" or large files of users' data to produce customer profiling. This data can also be used by police, the governmental bodies, scientists, businesses, military, and other industries where occasional breaches of data are expected .[16] Breaches and leaks of personal information including phone calls, credit card information, home address, and personal phone numbers are examples of information that is logged and stored by these corporations while making "data sets". Much of this information is being processed and sold to marketers for the purpose of marketing their products. This information is stored digitally and in some cases, regardless of the security of the information being stored, there are risks of unauthorized parties

1. Given a business situation in which managers require information from a database, determine, analyze and classify that information so that reports can be designed to meet the requirements.

Searching of data (Data Mining) when particular data is needed due to an urgent matter can be very hard for both employees and owner of the business firm;

The theme of this book is how businesses in today’s world use ever-improving technology to collect data, convert it into information and business intelligence, and combine this information and intelligence with the knowledge of the workers to help make the best decisions they possibly can for the benefit of the company and the customers. Throughout the book, there are discussions on the different ways that technology can help a business with this process. When going into detail about the various information systems, this book also brings into

Personal data are regulated by United Nations and urges States to implement effective measures to ensure that information concerning a person´s private life does not reach the hands of person who are not authorized by law to receive,process and use it.Thus private data are protected not only by law of States also by international laws, and concerning computer misuse

Imagine, that you come back from a hard day’s work. You put on your favorite grey sweats with a cozy sweater. Soon after, you get a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. Then you lean back on the sofa, turn on the television and change the channel to the local news. Breaking news with bright red letters are plastered across the screen. The news anchor goes on explaining that an employee at the local hospital accidentally donated data of patients. This means that patient’s social security numbers, addresses, medical records, and other personal information, were given away without patients’ permission or consent. At that moment you realize that all your personal information is out there for everyone to see and use; and there is nothing you can do about it. The collection of personal information is called data mining, and is collected through large online databases. The real question is that data mining violating our privacy and rights? Why are companies still collecting our personal information without our consent and how can we protect ourselves from breaches? Data mining should be limited in the United States and needs to undergo more appropriate privacy and security policies to protect citizens privacy.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, millions of Americans, and many more around the world, woke up to heart-wrenching news of a horrific magnitude. Two planes had collided into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third rammed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and yet a fourth crash-landed in Philadelphia. All victims of this carefully planned act of terrorism, several hundreds of innocent lives were lost in the direct assaults on the planes, a couple of thousand more were injured or killed from the damage caused by the attacks, and hundreds more were sacrificed in the rescue attempts.[1] It is unthinkable that such a large scale operation could have been

In December 2013, Target announced that massive amounts of credit and debit card information they collected over the years might be in the danger of theft. The credit card breach could affect as many as 70 million customers who swept cards in the retail stores or linked their cards with the membership card, the RedCard. Each card information contains a card number, holder’s name, address, phone number and etc. The more information the thieves got, the more conveniently the thieves could use them to get benefits from the card holders. Jia Lynn Yang and Amrita Jayakumar, the authors of “Target says up to 70 million more customers were hit by December data breach”, write about how bad people will use customers’ information to crime. These thieves possibly shop online by inserting the card information. They could also contact with the victims to gather more sensitive information, and even hack into their computers. This event forces us to seriously consider the crisis in how retails protect customers’ data (Yang &

In preparation for my debate on the topics of intelligence-led policing and Compstat policing, I have discovered the many advantages and disadvantages of using intelligence-led policing and Compstat policing. According to Carter & Carter (2009), intelligence-led policing is the collection of and analysis of data relating to crime, used by law enforcement in “developing tactical responses to threats and/or strategic planning related to emerging changing threats” (p. 317). When applied correctly, intelligence-led policing is a tool used for information sharing in identifying threats and developing responses to prevent those threats from reaching fruition (Carter, 2011). One of the advantages of using intelligence-led policing is its incorporation of data analysts. The role of the data analyst in the context of intelligence-led policing allows them to take specially trained analysts to take raw data from information found in reports and translate it into useful information for the officers, allowing the police to deploy resources more effectively and efficiently (Griffiths, 2016). Another advantage is its application through preventative and predictive policing (proactive policing), in which law enforcement take data and identify crucial variables such as terrorism or the emergence of criminal organizations, in hopes of stopping the problem at its roots (Carter, 2011). Terrorism is especially important and emphasized after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers in

Recently, my work has been adjusting to the recent buy out of my company and I have been working with the program specialists to convert out data. This week’s information started to look familiar and then it hit me, the database management system I have been watching the programmer use was written in SQL. This information seems pretty straight forward, but we will see how well I do on the assignment this week. I also learned this week, that the way Amazon can customizes a person shopping experience is through data mining. SQL is a great way to organize information. SQL queries are excellent for sorting out and bringing up the information that is needed. Pulling up customers contact information based on a geographic location can be important if a company needs to update them on a new law that passed in the state. SQL language simplifies marketing research for marketers. As we went over the data mining example with Amazon, this is a great way to promote products. Not only does Amazon do this type of data mining but almost every other online shopping site uses data mining as well. The other day I purchased some new cleaning supplies on jet.com. when I got to the checkout link, there was a section that suggested items. Because I am new to healthier cleaning options, I clicked on these options so I could check out what other brands had to

2. What considerations should a corporate executive in industries such as banking, health care, or higher education investigate when deciding on implementing a data-mining program?

Big data and its definition has changed over the years. In a 2011 research project by MGI and Mckinsey’s Business’ defined big data as

With data and the collection of it, comes the added need for security. To begin to understand how we need to secure the data we collect we need to understand a few aspects of the

How data mining can assist bankers in enhancing their businesses is illustrated in this example. Records include information such as age, sex, marital status, occupation, number of children, and etc. of the bank?s customers over the years are used in the mining process. First, an algorithm is used to identify characteristics that distinguish customers who took out a particular kind of loan from those who did not. Eventually, it develops ?rules? by which it can identify customers who are likely to be good candidates for such a loan. These rules are then used to identify such customers on the remainder of the database. Next, another algorithm is used to sort the database into cluster or groups of people with many similar attributes, with the hope that these might reveal interesting and unusual patterns. Finally, the patterns revealed by these clusters are then interpreted by the data miners, in collaboration with bank personnel.4

Since higher education has blurred the lines with traditional businesses, it is important to have the tools to assist them with valuable data and information, in making decisions. Using of data and having the right data mining tools can insure the institute’s success, in many forms, such as, identifying market trends, precision marketing, new products, performance management, grants and funding management, student life cycle management and procurement to mention a few. To get a better grasp on these benefits it’s important to understand data warehouse, data mining and the associated benefits.