Companies that engage in data mining have countless opportunities to be unethical. Many people don't know that when a person submits product registration, or when they fill out rebate information, even warranty information, which is manditory for many products, all the information is being sold to anyone that wants it. A great deal of this information is very raw and generalized, and is not worth much to very many people. In fact Emma Warrillow, a customer intelligence and data use consultant based in Toronto has said, "Most data mining applications don't need information such as names, addresses and account numbers to do their magic...." The troubling aspect of the statment is the adjective "MOST" that they used to describe data mining applications. The amount of data being mined every month is mind numbing. With that in mind, if even SOME information is specific enough to identify a person, it is too much. It is worth mentioning that "less-sensitive" inforation can be used to gain access to sensitive information.
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