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Data Mining Amazon.com Wish Lists
Dr. Webster writes "In his article "Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists," Tom Owad of Applefritter outlines a way in which one could build detailed personal profiles of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens in a matter of hours. Reading habits, personal tastes and even political party affiliation could be inferred from the results, and through the use of Yahoo! People and Google Maps, one could even map out geographically where people with certain interests or affiliations live, down to their address. Most surprisingly, the process of doing this is completely legal, and doesn't even violate Amazon's Conditions of Use."
Next time you see a recommendation like that, you can click the "Why was I recommended this?" link under it and then uncheck the "Use this for recommendations" checkbox by the items that you don't want to be used as sources for your recommendations. Alternatively, you can go into "Your Store" through the tabs at the top and then go to the Improve Your Recommendations section and find the items and uncheck the same checkbox.
a) I only want to share my wish list with people I trust;
b) I only want to share certain sublists with certain people.
They do! Go to "edit wishlist" and the second item after you name the list is "This list will be viweable by:" and it gives three choices: "Anyone who searches for me," "Only people I have invited with the 'Share this list' feature," or "Only me."
These days, it wouldn't even take an Act of Congress for Amazon's databases to become FBI databases...
Using data mining to catch criminals is nothing new and there is nothing wrong with it. Many white-collar criminals have be caught "cooking the books" using this kind of process. Having said that, I also have to say that there is a point where this practice can go too far. It can become an invasion of privacy that could cast the shadow of suspicion on to ordinary, law-abiding people.
Suppose you were a person who likes surfing the net to read things like "The Anarchist's Cookbook" (an entertaining read) who is also curious about Muslim Extremisim (because it is so often in the news) and is planning a car trip with your family to New York City and Washington D.C. Perhaps you have downloaded maps and driving directions to the Capital, the White House and the United Nations Building from MapQuest. Maybe you have visited EBay and bought some reloading equipment (because you are a sport-clay shooter).
Now imagine some data mining application at fbi.gov puts all of this information together and concludes that you are an extremist who is about to embark on a trip where you plan on bombing the United Nations building in New York City and the Capitol and the White House in Washington DC!
Seperate and disparite pieces of data aren't always able to fit nicely into a simple formula. This is where the danger of this kind of information comes in. Taken seperately and considered without an adequate foundation, these "facts" tend to support a totally erronious conclusion. Next thing you know, someone is quietly asking questions about you abd you have no idea why.
These kinds of things have happend to innocent people before. Someone I know faced scrutiny years ago shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. There was no real reason for his being suspect and it took a long time to figure out why they looked at him. The FBI questioned his neighbors, they followed him, photographed his home, and in general made life uncomfortable for him.
It took time to figure it out but, we finally concluded that there were reasons why he came to their attention. They were:
- He was a gun collector
- He bought gunpowder by the pound (he was a re-loader)
- He worked at a facility where he may possibly have had access to amonium nitrate
- He lived alone
- He lived in the wrong place (outside of town in an area linked to suspects)
- He had several 55 galon oil drums on his property
- He was a member of the NRA
To the FBI all this information seemed to indicate that he could possibly be linked as the third man in the Oklahoma City bombing. Nothing could have been further from the truth but for a few tense weeks, he was the focus of enough attention so that he felt like he could not visit friends, go target practicing, or do much of anything. He got paranoid and asked us to not call him because he thought he may be wiretapped. It really ate him up inside and he had done nothing wrong. The truth of the matter is that he is one of the most law-abiding people around. He had not done one illegal thing to draw this suspiscion on him. Litterally, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is just a kind of quiet guy who likes to keep to himself.
I don't think that data mining brought this investigation on him. I think his name simply popped up on too many lists (which is in a way, a form of manual data mining). Still with computers and access to hundreds or thousands of different data sources, the possibilities have compounded themselves making this kind of process likely to impact too many poeole. Innocent people.