Big Data presents several potential ethical and social challenges - Week 6

Big Data Presents several potential ethical and social challenges

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog. I hope you enjoyed my previous blog.Today I will be talking about Big Data and the challenges it faces.

Here is a video explaining what Big Data is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQeyU0YcPKY

Big Data is becoming more of a topical conversation each day due to technology growing and our reliance on data systems for companies. For those who do not know what Big Data is, it is a large data set that is so big that traditional data processing software cannot process it. There are also 3 types of Big Data, Structured Data, Unstructured Data and Semi Structured Data.  Examples of Structured Data would be name, address, credit card number, location etc. Examples of Unstructured Data would be social media posts, photos, audio, video etc. Facebook uses 500 terabytes a day to store peoples posts and pictures and Google records 3.5 Million search's per day !!!

There are many concerns around the misuse of big data ethics.The first is information consent, where the data collector is required to tell participants on how their data is being used. A lot of social media apps terms of service contracts often include the right to analysis your data, and a study showed that 65% of customers did not read the terms and conditions before they accepted them. I think we all may be guilty of that!!

Another concern of people is their privacy by these apps and websites. A lot of apps these days are able to track your location while you use or don't use the app. This can be very off putting for some customers.

Here is a video of a TED talk with Dr Fred Cate where he talks about data protection and consent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iPDpV8ojHA&t=43s

How many times have we all signed up to subscriptions or bought something off a company online and gave all our personal details and banking details ? Countless amount of times!! These companies then have to store all this data in a Big Data system. Companies must be very careful to keep their customers personal information safe.There have been many cyber attacks on companies and organisations over the years including household names like Yahoo, Microsoft and the HSE. This can be a very worrying time for customers as their private information has caused a loss                                                 of privacy to the users.

After you have read my blog today, I hope you have a better understanding of Big Data and the ethics and social challenges that it has and faces.  

As always I would love to hear your feed back from you all. 

See you next week, 

Hannah.