Who owns all your data?

data center

Data is any information stored in a computer in the form of files, images, text or video. Computer stores the data in the form of zeros and ones also called binary data.

In this article we are going to analyse who really controls all our data. How much data do we generate and what can be done using those data. Is it safe to give away your data on the internet and much more.

I don’t know if you have heard this term or not but this is the fact that if you aren’t paying for something you are the product. But the fact is even if you are paying you are the product. You are paying or not that is not the case here, the case is about all those data that you have shared to online website or mobile apps.

Facebook, Google, YouTube, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, These big companies have so much data that it is stored in giant data centers across the world. Small companies do not have much data and tech to do anything with all your data but these big giants have everything to do anything with all your data.

If you really think about all the data you have shared online you will be surprise to know that you have shared everything. By everything i mean everything.

You have shared you name, Your email address, Your parents name, Your photos, Your location, What you do at what time, Which time of the day you are most active, What kinds of things you are interested in. Where you like to go out the most, Your recent trips, Your mobile number, Your friends details and i am saying everything. You have literally sold yourself for using those companies services for free or for paid.

But all those above data are not controlled by a single company it is controlled by a bunch of APPS and Companies online. Think if a single company owns all your data, you will never know who is stalking at you, who is following where you are going. You blindly trust these companies, just because everybody is sharing things online you too need to. That should not be the case, you should think twice before joining any website or apps. You never know who is going to stalk you.

Now we are going to analyse which companies store what data.

 

Now lets look at facebook products having number of active users.

Lets find out the numbers of users twitter, pinterest, linkedin, skype, xbox, tumblr, amazon, snapchat, airbnb, flickr, uber have

 

Its time to see total number of users google has. All this data are collected from different sources and do not guarantee to be accurate because as time passes more and more people will join these companies and share data.

Total google product active users

Every company you come across is collecting your data. They are hungry for data. You must be wondering what do they do with these data. The answer is simple they use these data to keep track of the current market, they use these data for re-targeting. Re-targeting means if you visit any website they will track you and now they will only show you that website in the advertisement until you buy something. They want to change your mind. These data are also used for analytics which will be discussed later in this article.

What do they want to know axactly? They want to know:

  1. What you buy on festive season
  2. Where you go for vacation
  3. What time you drive most 
  4. Who are your friends
  5. What your friends do 
  6. Where you live
  7. What is you hobby
  8. At what time you get up
  9. Are you fat
  10. At what speed do you walk
  11. What kind of website you surf
  12. What apps you have installed in your mobile
  13. Which operating system you use
  14. What are you looking for

These are just few things I have listed here and let me tel you they want to know more than this. These companies have more data than any other companies in the entire world. They will use this data to improve their products or make new products that you are looking for. This data can be used for any purpose. Your privacy is at stake. I do not think it is good to share all your data. They are using it for good purpose right now but same can’t be said for future. There are some companies who buy and sell users data.

You might have heard the news that yahoo was hacked. If one day these sites and apps are hacked which means your data has gone in wrong hands. Hackers will not use data for any good purpose. They might follow you, they might steal you. They can do anything.

I do not think future is safe when so many users data is in the hands of very few. These are the only online companies. You must also know that even your car company collects data but those data are limited compared to the above companies. Think twice before sharing anything online.

Data is the new GOLD. Data helps these company stay ahead in the market and do not allow any competitor to take over it’s market. Data helps them to predict the future and make important company decisions.

Where do they keep your data?

All your data is kept in servers. They have built large cluster of servers to keep all your data. These servers are storage machines. When you have more cluster of servers you call it a data center. Facebook has many data centers across the world. These data centers are highly protected and secure.

 

What is big data and Analytics ?

In simple terms big data means huge data and analytics means analyzing that huge data for find a meaningful answer. As I said above about what answers they are looking for they use big data and analytics to find those answers about you. Data centers have huge data and it is impossible to access those huge data without any help of latest technologies like big data and analytics.