Data Mining in Our Every Day Lives

 


        Over holiday break, I was searching skincare to put on my Christmas list for my dad. I merely searched the brand Curology up on my laptop. Lo and behold, Curology ads where showing up in my instagram feed for the next week.  I found this a little bit creepy and invasive. This is an example of a marketing technique called data mining.  Data mining is when coorperations market to an individual specifically based on their data and past searches on the internet. Basically, instagram knew that I was searching up Curology on my computer and thus presented their ad to me to create a higher chance of gaining profit. This is present in our everyday lives whether we know it or not.
        A side of data mining which I don't really understand is that the ads pop up even when you don't interact with anything of the sorts online. For example, there are times that I will be thinking of something or a product and the next time I open instagram, there is advertisement for the product. Another time, I was having a conversation with my mom and I asked her the question, "Do you think cat's dream?" Neither of us knew the answer to this question so I decided to look it up on google. As soon as I typed in "Do" on the search bar, the first suggested search was "Do cats dream?" I don't know if instances like this are weird data mining or just coincidence and syncronicity. It is far fetched and creepy either way.

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