Data Mining and Group Profiling on the Internet

Custers B.H.M. (2001), Data Mining and Group Profiling on the Internet. In: Vedder A (red.) Ethics and the Internet. Antwerpen: Intersentia. 87-104, 2001

13 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2017

See all articles by Bart Custers

Bart Custers

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies

Date Written: 2001

Abstract

Lately there is a tendency of many companies operating on the Internet to only grant you access to their websites when you fill out an inquiery. Such inquieries ask for your name, address, e-mail address and more. These data, sometimes combined with surfing behaviour, are then used to discover knowledge with datamining techniques. Datamining is an automatic analysis, using mathematical algorithms, to find patterns and relations in the data. From the results group profiles can be derived, showing a property or a group of properties of a certain group of people. Such group profiles are very practical for direct marketing means. However, such group profiles can have negative implications for the privacy of the people involved. In this paper the advantages and disadvantages of datamining and group profiling on the Internet are discussed and a few solutions are suggested to the raised problems. These solutions consist of a combination of changes in the current legislation and the application of cryptographic modules that anonymize your identity on the Internet.

Keywords: Datamining, KDD, group profiling, Internet, spamming, direct marketing, privacy, anonymity

Suggested Citation

Custers, Bart, Data Mining and Group Profiling on the Internet (2001). Custers B.H.M. (2001), Data Mining and Group Profiling on the Internet. In: Vedder A (red.) Ethics and the Internet. Antwerpen: Intersentia. 87-104, 2001, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3047161

Bart Custers (Contact Author)

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies ( email )

2300 RA Leiden, NL-2300RA
Netherlands

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