Digging Too Deep: An Analysis on the Current State of Data Mining

 

 (Qlik.com)

 

Data mining in principle is the method used with the purpose of finding trends, patterns, correlations, and other relationship types among variables. As such, data mining is utilized by large businesses with the intent of gaining more knowledge about what they do by leveraging their data assets. However, data mining may also be used illegally. 

The most prominent illegal use of data mining are hidden crypto-miners installed on another software. Most software that have hidden crypto-miners built in them are usually pirated content, as the files involved within this type of software them are usually unsupervised by trusted sources, meaning that the likelihood of file publishers getting caught spreading crypto-miner infested software are almost zero; making pirated content a popular method of spreading crypto-miners on other people's devices. 

 

 (Plasbit.com)

 

As a computer science student, I have seen cases where people who I know personally have fallen victim to this type of scam wherein they install pirated content and then ask me the following day why their GPU usage is above average at idle. Do i think they deserve it for pirating content in the first place? Yes. However I don't think this justifies the illegal data mining that is being done by the publisher of the pirated content.

While data mining has its merits with its utilization in large businesses. With the current state of how laws regarding privacy in the cyberspace operates paired with the lack of possible mitigation that can be done with the crypto-miner issue (at least without involving piracy laws), , data mining is currently more of a threat rather than a tool. 

 

 (Medium.com)

 

If we were to ignore the looming threats involved with data mining, we would be a step closer to 1984. As Orwell puts it, 

 

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to." (George Orwell, 1984)

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Medina, D. (2021, May 31). Language, art, humanity: "1984" in 2021. Medium. https://medium.com/@medusalaughs99/language-art-humanity-1984-in-2021-2095cccf030

Plasbit. (n.d.). Cryptominer. Retrieved from https://plasbit.com/blog/cryptominer

Qlik. (n.d.). Data mining. Qlik. Retrieved from https://www.qlik.com/us/data-analytics/data-mining