ABSTRACT
So far in this book we have mainly discussed the value opportunities of big data and big data analytics. Indeed, these value opportunities can be considerable. However, in an era of big data firms are confronted with concerns about the storage and usage of data. This specifically concerns customer data. If customers have used digital and mobile devices, they will probably never be anonymous again. Their behavior is likely to be traced online, but also offline. For example, if customers with a mobile device enter a store, retailers using WiFi-based tracking tools can follow customers in the store and how they shop. On a more global level there are continuous debates about customers’ data being analyzed by governments. This has become high profile news as a result of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many of them apparently run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments. This has raised a high level of concern globally on the information privacy of individual global citizens. Can firms like Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, and Amazon be trusted with regard to their privacy policies? And is the information contained in emails sent in Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, or Yahoo observable and available for analysis by governments?
