User:Epalmer2021/sandbox

Data Mining
Large companies like Google and Facebook have different approaches to data mining. Google mines data in many ways including using an algorithm in Gmail to analyze information in emails. This use of information will then affect the type of advertisements shown to the user when they use Gmail. The advertisements will be focused on the user's interests at the time, so that the user will be more attracted to them. Facebook has over 1 billion registered users, and it often alters its privacy policy. Facebook has partnered with many data mining companies such as Datalogix and BlueKai to use customer information for targeted advertising. Ethical questions of the extent to which a company should be able to utilze a users information have been called "big data". Users tend to click through Terms of Use agreements when signing up on social media platforms, and they do not know how their information will be used by companies. This leads to questions of privacy and surveillance when user data is recorded.

Data Mining is thought to be most useful when analyzing information from active users. When a user dies and becomes inactive, they are rendered to have no value to most companies. These companies like Facebook and Google have different approaches to digital death. For Google, it is not profitable to advertise on an inactive Gmail account, and therefore no advertising is displayed but the email remains on Google's servers. In order to access the account of a deceased relative, Google requests someone to mail specific official documents, including the death certificate of the person, and the company is still unlikely to reveal the relative's account. While an inactive account is of zero value to Google, the company respects the rights of the posthumous individual even if the email may be sentimentally worth more to a relative. When an inactive account, specifically Gmail, is deleted, any accounts linked to it, (Youtube or Google Drive) will also be deleted. This system discourages the action of deleting a Google account.

On Facebook, posthumous profiles can now be memorialized or erased altogether. Facebook's option to memorialize a user does not, however, allow for a relative to filter through which information is to be memorialized. Users can visit a memorialized page and connect with others who are friends of the posthumous user. This function gives a Facebook user a digital legacy since they may choose not to have their account deleted.