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Unit 2: Data Mining Concept

without the consent of their customers. The selling of personal information may also bring harm notes
to these customers because you do not know what the other companies are planning to do with
the personal information that they have purchased.

security issues

Although companies have a lot of personal information about us available online, they do not
have sufficient security systems in place to protect that information. For example, recently the
Ford Motor credit company had to inform 13,000 of the consumers that their personal information
including Social Security number, address, account number and payment history were accessed
by hackers who broke into a database belonging to the Experian credit reporting agency. This
incidence illustrated that companies are willing to disclose and share your personal information,
but they are not taking care of the information properly. With so much personal information
available, identity theft could become a real problem.

Misuse of information/inaccurate information

Trends obtain through data mining intended to be used for marketing purpose or for some other
ethical purposes, may be misused. Unethical businesses or people may used the information
obtained through data mining to take advantage of vulnerable people or discriminated against
a certain group of people. In addition, data mining technique is not a 100 percent accurate; thus
mistakes do happen which can have serious consequence.

2.11 ethical issues of Data Mining

As with many technologies, both positives and negatives lie in the power of data mining. There
are, of course, valid arguments to both sides. Here is the positive as well as the negative things
about data mining from different perspectives.

2.11.1 consumers’ point of view

According to the consumers, data mining benefits businesses more than it benefit them.
Consumers may benefit from data mining by having companies customized their product and
service to fit the consumers’ individual needs. However, the consumers’ privacy may be lost as
a result of data mining.
Data mining is a major way that companies can invade the consumers’ privacy. Consumers are
surprised as how much companies know about their personal lives. For example, companies may
know your name, address, birthday, and personal information about your family such as how
many children you have. They may also know what medications you take, what kind of music
you listen to, and what are your favorite books or movies. The lists go on and on. Consumers
are afraid that these companies may misuse their information, or not having enough security
to protect their personal information from unauthorized access. For example, the incidence
about the hackers in the Ford Motor company case illustrated how insufficient companies are
at protecting their customers’ personal information. Companies are making profits from their
customers’ personal data, but they do not want to spend a lot amount of money to design a
sophisticated security system to protect that data. At least half of Internet users interviewed by
Statistical Research, Inc. claimed that they were very concerned about the misuse of credit care
information given online, the selling or sharing of personal information by different web sites
and cookies that track consumers’ Internet activity.
Data mining that allows companies to identify their best customers could just be easily used
by unscrupulous businesses to attack vulnerable customer such as the elderly, the poor, the
sick, or the unsophisticated people. These unscrupulous businesses could use the information

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