Target Targeting Pregnant Women

Target has specific ways of tracking when a women is likely pregnant. They data mine information. Target looks at specific transactions that if purchased together can indicate that a women is pregnant. If Target assumes that a women is pregnant coupons will be sent to the customers house at an expense and habit forming period of her life according to the article. Target even exposed a girls pregnancy. This was done once at Target when coupons were sent out to a man's house about baby clothes, cribs, etc. The customer arrived at Target store angry and upset because he says Target sent his daughter coupons about baby items and that is encouraging her to get pregnant. The manager was completely unaware of what was going on, but the mailer was addressed to the customers daughter, but the manager apologized on more than one occasion. Later on the man called Target back and apologized because he was unaware that his daughter was pregnant and this happened about a month ago. The primary question to ask is was Target doing an ethical act by data mining this certain customer purchasing information?

Source: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-16/strategy/31065696_1_pregnant-woman-coupons-target

Data Mining Is Finally Seen In A Good Way

Many bad things has been said about data mining and the biggest one is privacy. Many are concerned that data mining invades the privacy of individuals and by doing this certain people can access individuals personal information such as a bank account statement. According to the article data mining might be seen in a good way because it will pry loose consumer information and organize it in a way that helps individuals make smarter money decisions. Along with this information banks will be able to understand the needs of their customers better and individuals will be able to make smart money decisions. The exposure of certain personal information can increase the financial education effort. An example of data mining can be seen in a good light happened in California where three utilities disclosed detailed energy consumption records and many could download this to view their consumption. One customer downloaded her data and discovered that her daughter was taking long showers and the showers required lots of water.The utility bill decreased once her daughter stopped taking long showers. Since data is already made available by the government there is a huge problem with getting banks to go along with this. Banks are concerned with identity theft and hackers being exposed to consumers information, so why go along with this on-going debate?

Source: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/03/06/privacy-heres-how-data-mining-might-actually-help-consumers/



Department of defense and data mining

Source:http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/04/05/dod-considers-illegal-data-mining-part-of-capital-crime/

 This blog post suggest that data mining might be able to allow the department of defense to prove intent on various crimes committed by Bradley Manning. It mentions a post to Wikipedia by Bradley Manning leaking what the government considers critical documents. This post included a quote from another article,"  Accused WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning installed and used unauthorized “data-mining software” on his SIPRnet workstation during the time he allegedly siphoned hundreds of thousands of documents off that classified network, the Army said Friday in response to inquiries from Threat Level.

Manning’s use of unauthorized software was the basis of two allegations filed against him this year in his pending court martial, but the charge sheet listing those allegations was silent on the nature of that software.

On Friday, an Army spokeswoman clarified the charges. “The allegations … refer to data-mining software,” spokeswoman Shaunteh Kelly wrote in an e-mail. “Identifying at this point the specific software program used may potentially compromise the ongoing criminal investigation.”

[snip]

If Manning installed data-mining software on his SIPRnet workstation, that could potentially strengthen the government’s case against the alleged leaker.,"

 The agency is still creating its case for this matter, anyway this was an interesting way data mining was used though since it was illegal so it's kinda a downer.

Private Records Being Used to Make Profits

Hospitals are being criticized for patient data mining.

There have been concerns about hospitals using data mining to determine which patients are most likely to pay their bills on time. This information is uncovered by observing and analyzing private information such as health records. Critics say that mining for the best customers selects privileged patients and denying less privileged people of the right to healthcare. Hospital employees claim that it helps determine the most effective drugs to use and surgeries to perform, and improve the services provided to patients. The purpose of looking through private records to find the best customers is to make higher revenues through customer relationship management.

Data Deception

In 2007 Sears attempted to start its own data mining project and sent out a proposal to its customers asking them to be part of a group to better understand their buying habits and ipso facto better service them. What the customers didn't know was how deep Sears was really delving into their personal lives and computers. Information like bank loans and medical superscription's where buried inside the contract and most of the people who signed up with this service didn't even read the contract just said yes received a measly 10 dollars compensation for joining and unknowingly let sears see all their laundry, dirty or clean. Sears was ordered by the FTC to end this project and destroy all data collected for this project and to cease and desist. This project seemed to be the start of a even faster growing trend of data gathering from retailers to social media everyone who is one the internet is susceptible to data mining. This article warns about letting yourself go too far in your posting of private or sensitive material on the internet. No matter how secure you think it is once its on the internet its out there forever. 

Source  :http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2059237,00.html

Data Mining: Terrifying Terrorists

Source: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zn4z6q4#page-2

The article I am posting is about the use of data mining to track suspicious behavior in people that may or may not be part of terrorist plot and organizations. Dataveillence is a term used to describe this type of data mining procedure, it involves taking and collecting data from various travel services, sites, and other government sources and compiling it into a large database. From this database then an algorithm is applied and usable data is then shown as output. This data is used to find inconsistencies that may point out terrorists and plot before it happens.

Process of Data Mining

• Exploration is the first stage in the process of data mining. You will want to explore and prepare data, or clean the data you have. If you have a large number of variables to consider, you may need to reduce them to a range that is easy to deal with.
• The second stage of the data mining process is called pattern identification. What this stage consists of is looking for patterns and choose one that will allow you to make the best predictions. One of the best ways to find the best predictive patterns to a given situation is to find which one performs at the highest level.
• The third stage of data mining is deployment but you cannot move to this stage until you have found a pattern from stage 2 that was highly predictive