Roundup of the Potential Process:

 

The Business Perspective

Advertising

• It isn’t always the website showing the ads, they are just the host
• The advertisers detect that a user has potential particular interests and adjusts the ads they see on a page accordingly

 

Purchasing

• Particularly prevalent in online retail environments
• Based on your previous browsing and personal profile

How Stuff Works (2015)

The Government Perspective

War on Crime and Terrorism

• Through adopting web data mining techniques, Governments claim to attempt to track potential terror and crime suspects and prevent future attacks by analysing the web usage of particular individuals
• Edward Snowden is a key player in uncovering the extent of the governments surveillance
• The NSA used their secret ‘Prism’ programme to access internet data
• A similar trend emerges with the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)

BBC (2014)

The Guardian (2013)

 

The Link

• According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the data collection by the NSA goes beyond simply mining the web through their own methods
• Instead, evidence shows that high tech firms such as Apple and Google have collaborated with the NSA to exchange user data, despite these firms denying all knowledge

The Guardian (2013)