Big-Data

Big-Data refers to the mass collection of data, usually involving analytics on the internet to spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. The mass collection of data is becoming extremely common as primarily a marketing strategy, using the user’s browser history to show advertisements that correlate with their recent searches. The size of complex datasets often increases exponentially in size, and questions have arised on the morality of using personal information for business purposes. Anonymity, and Identity of web users can be a concern, as the user relies on the security of the company that collects the data.

## Common Usage

The term “big data” involves a variety of uses. These include data storage, analysis, sharing, transfer, querying, and information privacy.Governments, businesses, scientists, and medical practitioners use complex sets of data.  Lately, the uses of big data involve predictive analysis, and user behavior analytics to extract useful information from data, especially in business informatics, and other important fields of research.

## Complexity and Future

One thing that seems to be a constant in big data is the size of most datasets, as they are often extremely large and grow exponentially. Software logs, mobile devices, and information sensing devices collect mass amounts of data every day. Many companies collect thousands of gigabytes of data everyday that are collected and stored on sometimes thousands of servers at a time. Developed countries are increasingly using data-intensive technologies. There are 4.6 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, and between 1 billion and 2 billion people accessing the internet. Based on a report by a marketing company IDC Technologies, the volume of data on the internet will increase from 4.4 zettabytes in 2012 to 163 zettabytes in 2025.

## Criticism

Most of the controversy surrounding big data revolves around the responsibility of large companies and their usage of datasets that could harm the anonymity of user’s private data. Some of the world largest companies depend on the storage and transfer of data in more than one sense.

Examples of these companies are Amazon, Apple, PayPal, and as seen in recent news, Facebook. These companies own mass amounts of personal information stored on large datasets. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has been under fire for a data breach which involved the collection of up to 87 Million facebook user’s personal information by a third party company. This information was then used to influence voters on behalf of any political figures that hired the company.

Data Leaks are nothing new, and every year hackers find new ways to steal thousands, and often millions of personal information using large datasets. There’s much controversy on how much a user can trust the collection of their data by large companies, and who can possibly gain access to their information.

## References

1. “What Is Big Data ? - Definition from WhatIs.com.” *SearchDataManagement*, searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/big-data.
2. “Data, Data Everywhere.” *The Economist*, The Economist Newspaper, 27 Feb. 2010, www.economist.com/node/15557443.
3. “Number of Mobile Phone Users Worldwide 2013-2019.” *Statista*, www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of-mobile-phone-users-worldwide/.