The Ugly Side Of Big Data

It’s true that data has laid the foundation for most technology driven changes and that there are many positives to what data brings, but there are a number of negatives too. It is about time that chief marketing officers understood the larger impact their decisions can have.

- Noor Fathima Warsia

‘Data can trigger the next war’. As strong as that sounds, there is evidence in various instances today that vindicate the statement. Russia hacking Yahoo; the ongoing conversation on Russia’s interference in the US Presidential Elections; cyber attacks; CIA getting hacked; and leaked classified documents that put people’s lives at risk.

“This is all happening at a very macro level right now, but there is nothing preventing it from being personal. Private life is made public because of apps that are tracking people — there is both good and bad in this,” comments Theresa Lamontagne, head of digital marketing and media operations at Verizon.

She explains that as marketers, brands have been collecting data with benign intent. “We are looking to use this data to understand consumers, and to create or show services and products that are relevant to them. But as we see that data is being tapped into with mal-intent, it is a cause for alarm,” she says.

Explaining how it started, bioanalytics firm Lightwave’s CEO Rana June, says it was the industry that went about collecting as much data as possible, relevant or not, for later use. “As long as we have it, we can worry about what to do with it later. That started as a behaviour, hoping that AI will solve the issue, but it has created a bad behaviour,” she said.