Data Mining - A small hole in Privacy?

Few days ago I visited a hotel. It was a great experience and to add cherry on top the gave a feedback form as well. As a feedback enthusiast, I put in all the correct information and gave them an honest feedback. Few days later, I got a call from the hotel manager wishing me a Happy birthday! I was amazed, overjoyed. Nowadays, your relatives seldom wish  you on your birthday, but this man called out of nowhere and wished me. It made me take my family to that hotel and I was given a great discount.

While returning, I thought how do they manage this.  Being into technology i figured out that they might have a database of customer details. But, to wish a customer on his birthday was still an amazing thing. How could they achieve this. The answer is Data Mining. The term may be new for most of us, but the idea exists since many years. It has crated a revolution in market now a days.

After digging deep into the topic, I got to know some techniques of gathering data about the customers. In one shopping mall they calculate how much time customer is standing outside a shop staring at items, and which shop is he standing opposite to. Is it apparels, food , footwear's, bags or some other ? By getting the image data or a video footage from CCTV, we get the offers messages when we are at shop. Isn't this fast ? CCTV also gives the information about the person accompanying you. The offers are generated accordingly.

This is amazing technique to lure the customers in buying the product. but on the other hand it is a double edged sword. There is an unintended consequence. Now, your private life is known to most of the retail shops, hotels and other similar places. You are called on your birthday, your anniversary, and on each special da you had mentioned in the feedback form. Your feedback is taken seriously but your information is taken seriously as well. Some may argue that this is not harmful as we get all the benefits.

This argument is true for certain extent. When we can share the most of the things on social media and make it our private life public then what's the harm in this. So, this is the reason I have asked a question in my title. Is this creating a hole in your privacy ? Is it forcing you to visit a place, you were not planning to go. We should think on this.

I would like to mention some more issues about mining. It is a great technology but you should know some technological drawbacks as well.

As discussed earlier,one of the key issues raised by data mining technology is not a business or technological one, but a social one. It is the issue of individual privacy. Data mining makes it possible to analyze routine business transactions and glean a significant amount of information about individuals buying habits and preferences.

Another issue is that of data integrity. Clearly, data analysis can only be as good as the data that is being analyzed. A key implementation challenge is integrating conflicting or redundant data from different sources. For example, a bank may maintain credit cards accounts on several different databases. The addresses (or even the names) of a single cardholder may be different in each. Software must translate data from one system to another and select the address most recently entered.

A hotly debated technical issue is whether it is better to set up a relational database structure or a multidimensional one. In a relational structure, data is stored in tables, permitting ad hoc queries. In a multidimensional structure, on the other hand, sets of cubes are arranged in arrays, with subsets created according to category. While multidimensional structures facilitate multidimensional data mining, relational structures thus far have performed better in client/server environments. And, with the explosion of the Internet, the world is becoming one big client/server environment.

Finally, there is the issue of cost. While system hardware costs have dropped dramatically within the past five years, data mining and data warehousing tend to be self-reinforcing. The more powerful the data mining queries, the greater the utility of the information being gleaned from the data, and the greater the pressure to increase the amount of data being collected and maintained, which increases the pressure for faster, more powerful data mining queries. This increases pressure for larger, faster systems, which are more expensive. 

 

So, before we move in more depth about mining, it is always good to know about the issues first. In my next few blogs I will talk about mining techniques and how it can be effectively used by various organizations.