Big Data Privacy

This research report discusses the importance, advantages, and issues of big data privacy in social media technology. It explores the application of big data privacy in social media and provides recommendations for future issues. The report also includes a discussion on the definition of big data privacy and its significance in social media.

Running head: BIG DATA PRIVACY
Big Data Privacy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction...............................................................................................................2
2. Discussion................................................................................................................2
2.1 Importance of Big Data Privacy in Social Media.................................................4
2.2 Advantages of Big Data Technologies and Privacy in Social Media..................6
2.3 Issues faced due to Big Data Privacy in Social Media Technology...................8
3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................10
4. Recommendations for Future Issues related to Big Data Privacy.........................11
References.................................................................................................................13

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1. Introduction
Big data is stated as a field that mainly treats several methods for better
analysis, systematic extraction of information and even dealing with those data sets,
which are extremely complex and large in size and could not be dealt with the
traditional application software of data processing (Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015).
These big data is also categorised by 3V or data volume, variety and velocity. The
first V or volume refers to the extreme or huge volume of data and it is measured
that how big is the respective data set.
The second V or variety discusses about wide or broad distinctive data variety
types and finally the third V or velocity refers to the significant velocity at which the
data would be managed by subsequent user. Big data is extremely safe and secured
and hence it is being used by several organizations and businesses for effectively
dealing with their data set complexity (Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012). The following
research report outlines a brief discussion on the application of big data privacy in
social media. The importance, advantages and disadvantages of big data privacy
would be described in this research report. Moreover, suitable recommendations will
also be provided here.
2. Discussion
Definition of Big Data Privacy
Big data is termed as the proper utilization of user behaviour analytics,
predictive analytics as well as any other advanced methodologies of data analytics,
which can easily extract value from data for any particular size of data set. A proper
analysis of these data sets could easily search for new correlations for spotting the
business trends, prevention of diseases, combating crime and many more (Sagiroglu

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& Sinanc, 2013). The data sets majorly grow rapidly as they are gradually and
increasingly gathered with the help of cheap as well as numerous information
sensing IoT or internet of things like wireless sensor network, RFID or radio
frequency identification reader, software log, mobile device, microphone, camera
and remote sensor.
Voluminous data could come from several sources like mobile applications,
business transaction system, medical record, social network, customer database,
internet click stream log, machine generated data, real time data sensor utilized in
the environments of IoT or internet of things. Since big data can deal with large data
sets, which comprise of more complex and varied structure, it is required to consider
the privacy and security aspects of this particular technology as well (Kallinikos &
Constantiou, 2015). The incrementing big data amount even increments a high
breaching chance for individual privacy and security. Numerous parties are
eventually included in such distributed systems and hence the threat for privacy
violation is highly incremented (Sharma, Mithas & Kankanhalli, 2014).
There are several mechanisms for privacy preservation that are developed for
privacy protection at various stages such as generation of data, storage of data and
finally processing of data within the entire life cycle of big data (Wu et al., 2014). As
this particular technology of big data easily and promptly reveals the hidden patterns
and even identifies secret correlations, privacy issues are required to be considered
majorly. Due to the recent development in technology, the amount of generated data
by health care applications, internet connection, sensor network, social networking
site and several others are incrementing on a regular basis (Xu et al., 2014). The
potential privacy breach is also increased in this sector and with subsequent power

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driven by technology of big data, information gathering, storage as well as
reutilization to effectively gain profit in a business is being stopped.
2.1 Importance of Big Data Privacy in Social Media
According to Sagiroglu and Sinanc (2013), big data privacy is one of the major
and the most important as well as significant aspect that is required to be analysed
on a priority basis. The users’ data might be eventually breached under few
important and significant circumstances, which involve personal information as soon
as amalgamated with every external data set, may lead to the subsequent
interference of few new factors regarding the users. Such facts might even be
termed as secretive and should not be revealed to any other user to maintain
confidentiality. With the advent and increase utilization of Internet, social media has
become an important part of individual’s daily routine. Security and privacy should be
enhanced for ensuring that users are not facing any issue regarding data
confidentiality.
Big data has a major advantage to provide security from unnecessary data
thefts and data loss. The main issue in social media arises from unsecure
advertisements and big data can easily secure the entire social media site by
displaying only safe advertisements. As per Lu et al. (2014), personal information is
also sometimes collected as well as utilized in a social media website for adding
value to the respective business and finally the sensitive data is being stored as well
as processed within one specific unsecured location perfectly and thus leakage of
data might occur in the two phases of storage and processing.
The various subsequent mechanisms could be eventually assembled on the
basis of the various stages of life cycle of big data and for protecting the data

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privacy, access should be restricted and proper data protection techniques should be
used. The major techniques for data access restriction ensure that the data is not
released to non-trusted parties. Several distinctive approaches for ensuring
protection of privacy within the stage of data storage are majorly based on few
encryption techniques (Kaisler et al., 2013). This encryption based technique could
be even subdivided into encryption based on storage path, encryption based on
identity and encryption based on attribute. Moreover, to ensure that sensitive
information is absolutely safe and secured, hybrid clouds are being utilized, in which
the sensitive data are being stored within private cloud. The phase of data
processing even involve PPDP or privacy preserving data publishing as well as
extraction of knowledge from the respective data.
There are few techniques that are being used in big data privacy and the main
the main techniques used for social media are as follows:
i) Social Network Analysis: It is a technique that helps in analysing the
relationships within people in social network and commercial activities. This
technique is required for checking how people from various populations form several
ties with the outsiders for finding the influence and importance of any individual in a
group.
ii) Machine Learning: This particular technique incudes software, which could
learn from data and hence it is responsible for providing computers with the core
capability of learning without even being explicitly programmed and is also focused
on making proper prediction on the basis of known properties that are learned from
training set of data. Thus, it becomes quite easy to differentiate between spam and
non spam email messages.

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This big data privacy is extremely important and significant as the major
issues of data processing and data theft are required to be avoided on time. This is
quite vital for the social media as it helps in eradicating any kind of complexity for
securing users’ data. A proper maintenance of big data is quite effective to deal with
these issues and hence making the entire business accurate and significant (Zhang,
2018). It even offers huge processing power as well as capability of storage. The
technologies of big data such as Hadoop are responsible for performing the tasks,
which are eventually considered as quite difficult for the conventional systems. Often
few popular websites want to eradicate big data technology for not being able to deal
with the issues of privacy that are common to this particular technology. Data loss is
a common issue in this purpose (Victor, Lopez & Abawajy, 2016). Hence, big data
privacy should be considered by all organizations for bringing more success and
popularity in the social media website.
2.2 Advantages of Big Data Technologies and Privacy in Social Media
There are some of the major and the most significant advantages or benefits
in social media so that data is being secured. Since, it deals with both structured and
unstructured data, this particular technology is extremely popular for all organizations
or businesses (Katal, Wazid & Goudar, 2013). More information is gained and hence
better support and decision making process is highly enhanced in the process. It
provides the potential to use data in an efficient manner and so that the organization
could easily take data from any other source and then analyse it to search for
answers that can enable some of the core and important advantages.
The major as well as the most vital advantages of big data technologies and
privacy in social media are provided here:

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i) Cost Effectiveness: The first as well as the foremost advantage of big data
technologies and privacy is its cost effectiveness (Eckhoff & Sommer, 2014). Few
important tools of this big data technology such as Cloud based analytic and Hadoop
can easily and promptly bring out the subsequent cost benefit to the respective
business as soon as larger data amount are to be stored and such big data tools
even help for identification of more efficient methods. Social media often incurs high
costs and thus it is required to maintain a proper budgetary control while involvement
of new technologies. Due to cost effectiveness, the users often do not face any type
of issue and they can easily implement this particular technology, hence getting
more popularity and significance in the market.
ii) Time Reductions: The second important and vital merit of these
technologies and privacy is the time reductions or time effectiveness. The various
high speed of big data tools such as in-memory analytics and Hadoop can easily
distinguish the new sources of data that are quite helpful for the users of social
media to investigate data immediately and then make quicker decisions over the
basis of respective learnings (Yu, 2016). Due to this time reduction or time
effectiveness, there is almost negative chance of data being delayed under any
circumstance.
iii) Helps in Developing New Product: Big data is also extremely helpful as it
is being used for developing new products effectively and efficiently. This is mainly
done after knowing about the customer needs’ trends as well as satisfaction through
analytics that help the users to create new products as per customer requirements.
The social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook are responsible for
providing any type of new updates or news of the entire world and with involvement
of big data, it is quite easy to maintain news and updates without much issue. This is

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extremely important for any business to bring creativity and innovation in business
and also fulfilling all types of requirements of the users.
iv) Understanding Conditions of Market: A business becomes successful
when the market conditions are favourable for it (Kshetri, 2014). This is being easily
and promptly done by subsequent analysis of big data and hence knowing about the
respective purchasing behaviours of customers and helping the organization to find
out about the various products, which are being sold to produce products as per the
trend. Moreover, competitive advantages are also obtained in this process.
v) Controlling Online Reputation: The next important advantage of this
particular technology of big data is that it helps to control the online reputation in a
better manner. The various tools of big data could easily complete the sentiment
analysis and thus it can refer to the customer preferences in a significant way. It is
helpful to the business for understanding customer demands and hence maintaining
and controlling respective business online reputation.
vi) Easy Data Management: Big data is responsible for easier data
management for any specific social media (Xu et al., 2014). It could easily eliminate
data niches for the core purpose that social media could easily obtain a unique
overview of customers, which involve countless descriptive, industry specified and
calculated metrics for allowing a detailed record of client’s behaviour. It provides
PPDM or privacy preserving data mining for data management.
vii) Real time Forecasting: Big data even allows real time forecasting as well
as monitoring of data, which might majorly affect the overall operations and
performances of businesses.

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viii) Effective Decision Making: The entire process of decision making is
highly enhanced so that it becomes extremely easy for the business to improve the
quality of their decisions.
2.3 Issues faced due to Big Data Privacy in Social Media Technology
The data with several rows eventually offer better statistical power, however
data with high complexity or more attributes might lead to a high false discovery rate.
The respective data streams within an exceptional speed should be dealt in a
specified time. The radio frequency identifier tags, smart metering and sensors are
substantially driving the basic requirement for dealing with the various data torrents
within real time (Kallinikos & Constantiou, 2015). A major feature big data in social
media is variety, which refers to the fact that data comes in several kinds of formats
like structured as well as numerical data within traditional database to respective
unstructured text document, financial transactions, audio, electronic mails, stock
ticker data and video. These types of data are extremely common in social media.
The data handling complexities are reduced to a high level and hence it is advisable
to use big data in any social media websites.
Although, there are some of the major and the most significant advantages of
big data technologies and privacy, few issues or problems are also present for this
particular technology and these noteworthy issues are as follows:
i) Major Concern about Security and Privacy: This is the first and the
foremost issue that is being faced due to the presence of big data in social media
(Sharma, Mithas & Kankanhalli, 2014). The emerging applications of this particular
technology mainly concerns about security and privacy. Moreover, the larger
business organizations have faced data security or privacy issues after

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implementation of big data. One of the most prominent examples in this sector is
Facebook. The entire data breach of Facebook occurred due to privacy issues in big
data and there are several instances of data breaching. For this particular issue, the
respective businesses seek to develop as well as maintain capabilities of big data for
investing on infrastructure, processes and protocols to have an aim of protecting the
data and mitigation of security risks.
ii) Challenges and Requirements for Technology: The next issue that is
common is respect to big data privacy is the major challenge or requirement of
technology. These big data also needs capabilities of processing as well as technical
proficiencies. As a social media website has the capacity of mining larger data
volumes, they have to invest in the infrastructure of IT after comprising processors
with required computing power, larger databases and even any other IT capability
(Chen, Chiang & Storey, 2012). Moreover, they even require a significant
competency degree, which allowed them to address the major issues of data
storage, data transportation, data accessing, infrastructure scalability, database
management, validity and quality assurance and few others.
iii) Problem with the Value of Big Data: The next important issue, which is
extremely common for big data privacy is the issue with big data value. There is a
persistence of concerns on the actual value. To resolve the challenges as well as
responding to the needs of big data implementation eventually requires high
investments (Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015). Thus, every social media does not
have the scope to maintain big data value.
iv) Handling Voluminous Data: The respective management of voluminous
data is the next issue that is being faced in big data privacy. As big data has to deal

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with complex data sets, it is extremely common for the user that handling of
voluminous data is being a major issue to the user or organization (Wu et al., 2014).
Due to handling of such bulky data, there is always a high chance that data would be
lost forever and data security and privacy would be lost. This is extremely vital for
social media as it stores users’ confidential data.
3. Conclusion
Thus, from this above discussion, conclusion can be drawn that technology of
big data would one of the most significant terms, which significantly describes about
larger volume of both unstructured as well as structured data, which deluges any
specific business on a regular basis. These big data could even be eventually
analysed for each and every insight, which eventually lead for an effective and
efficient decisions as well as strategic business moves. The respective volume of the
data states about the fact that organizations collect data from various sources like
social medium, business transactions and sensitive information from machine to
machine or sensor’s data. The new and effective technologies of big data like
Hadoop are responsible for storing these types of huge amount of data easily and
promptly. The second aspect of big data is velocity. The above provided report has
clearly described about various important and significant characteristics of big data
security and privacy with identification of several characteristics, benefits and
demerits in social media website. Furthermore, suitable recommendations are also
provided in this particular report for big data privacy and how to deal with issues
related to this technology in future.

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4. Recommendations for Future Issues related to Big Data Privacy
The recommendations to the organization or user for any kind of big data
privacy issue in the future in social media are as follows:
i) Implementation of Machine Learning: Machine learning is termed as one
of the major and most significant technology that is recommended to deal with the
complexities of big data privacy in future in an efficient manner. This particular
technology will be referred to as a forefront of big data revolution. This could be
helpful for the social media to prepare data and then conduct respective predictive
analysis and hence allowing the businesses to overcome privacy issues in future.
ii) Data Scientists: The data analysts or data scientists can eventually have
the core capabilities of identifying all types of issues associated to big data privacy
and even to deal with voluminous data. The social media hence would be able to
understand their current position in the market and also would be able to effectively
deal with the issues after conduction of prediction analysis.
iii) Buying of Algorithms: This is yet another important and significant
recommendation to deal with their future issues of big data privacy in an effective
manner. These users should buy their own algorithms instead of buying software.
Buying of algorithms would ensure them that they can put their own data within the
algorithm. This would help in reducing excess costs for maintenance of the website.
iv) Better Investments: Big data technology requires good investments so
that privacy and security issues associated to the technology are eradicated on time
and in a better manner. This type of investment would even help in maintaining the
technology and complex data of the social media effectively and thus it is highly
recommended.

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