"Big data lacks privacy" - IDG.se

Elisabeta Velickovic and Elina Mathiasson at the School.

your master’s thesis Big data – big problems was presented recently at the Business School at the University of Gothenburg. What did you find?

class=”paragraphIntro”> – By technology to store and analyze big data is still in its infancy, so it is usually no threat to the privacy of the day. But when the technology is used by more people, so does the need for clearer rules to protect the privacy of the users of such social media. One finding is that there is confusion around what big data is, which can be problematic from a privacy standpoint.

What problems can arise?

– The Great the problem today is that there are no clear rules for privacy around big data . Privacy Act provides privacy protection for structured data. But on unstructured data, such as text, audio and video, may be handled quite freely. Acquis experienced by those interviewed in the paper as uninterpretable and limited, which can create problems containing privacy. The result could also be an uncertainty for businesses, which in the worst case, can inhibit the development of big data.

How did you go proceed?

– We analyzed various aspects of big data in a way which relates to integrity, accuracy, ownership, and availability of data. Since we interviewed suppliers, consultants and insurance companies. Big data was found to be strongly associated with social media, despite the fact that there are many forms of unstructured data. A common perception was that big data is a good way to give customers better deals. But the development of the Internet makes it difficult to define the limits of data are public and private and integrity protected.

What type of guidelines needed?

– It should be clearer how companies should go about collecting and analyzing big data, to avoid violations of integrity. An example where it might require clearer privacy rules, social media, which collects and processes data about users in order to package them into service. A more difficult problem is how such rules should be designed. Information is becoming increasingly available worldwide and there are different rules in different countries.

What made you interested big data?

– We read a course on decision support and became interested in privacy issues surrounding big data. Not the least of which many consider big data containing privacy-sensitive, by making it possible to store and analyze data about purchasing habits based partly on data that companies do not always need. Therefore there is a need to raise the ethical discussion of how big data is used in businesses.