Big Data Age beware of "black market"

With the rapid development of social networks, the Internet will release http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13584.html "> Massive data in real time." Social networks provide a wealth of services to individual users, reflecting their value in application. However, privacy issues are even more worrisome when personal data in social networks is searched arbitrarily. It is particularly noteworthy here that, in such a large data age, the growing data "black market" is dangerous.

Exceeding the "usage rules" of the website, a large amount of data is sold

"Big Data" has been a recent concern, and the dangers of the data "black market" have also begun to be widely discussed.

At present, social networking sites have varying degrees of openness to the real-time data generated by their users, collected by some data providers. Some monitoring data of the market analysis agencies, especially finance, manufacturers, retail and other data users enterprises will be these real-time data two applications, to grasp the market response to new products, testing consumer awareness of the brand.

If monitoring occurs, a problem can be captured and a timely response is made. In addition, disaster relief organizations are also very concerned about the application of social data. However, in the collection process, these data have exceeded the website (publisher) "Use rules" to carry out data collection, and sell it to other enterprises and other acts.

Hackers often invade the server, stealing personal data such as credit cards or corporate confidential data, is clearly illegal. Collecting social-networking data is not a crime, but rather a "grey market" or a more opaque black market. They are using open APIs such as Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites such as Weibo, which allow two of apps for Web sites and database interfaces to be used, intentionally collecting data that goes beyond the site's original usage rules.

Over the past 5 years, websites that have disclosed similar open APIs have exploded. This is a generous move by publishers, but data collectors using these APIs often "want more data". As a result, there are many illegal data collection behaviors outside the rules of website usage.

There is no way to curb illegal data collection behavior

Many people will ask, can the program process to eliminate the social networking site open API is malicious use? At present, there is no perfect solution to the problem, despite the measures to curb such illegal practices.

"Coca-Cola" signs are everywhere. The logo is free to watch, but can not be used arbitrarily. Social networking site users post content, access or forwarding of this, like trademarks. Data providers or developers can also view all of the data, but they should have a red line before two applications, depending on the use of social networking sites. But the market desire for data transcends this line.

There are, of course, ways of buying data from data agents and combining them into more value-added personal information. In fact, many data combinations, such as the information we write on social networking sites, the location information displayed by smartphones, have been able to lock individuals with high precision.

Based on a variety of data sources, like decoding, and then the puzzle, digging out the personal information system, as if it is a black market. If publishers can generate massive amounts of data at high speed by technology, external data providers can also tap into the information of individual users.

In the 2010, Facebook set restrictions on indexing files in API usage rules because it was realized that it was easy to implement data mining.

What the average user needs to be aware of

So what should the average user do with social networking sites?

Any publisher wants to control as much user information as possible. However, the question is which settings should be required? Users often unknowingly ignore data that they do not want to disclose, and the results are often exploited for a variety of purposes. It can be said that the black market of large data will only increase, but not disappear. Therefore, users themselves in order to protect personal information, in the application of various social networking sites, need to be patient to spend time to read and understand the privacy policy of each website.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)