AshGhebranious · @AshGhebranious
29th Jul 2014 from TwitLonger
@Asher_Wolf @JesselynRadack @Thomas_Drake1 Okay say you got a fly buys card and you use it at most times. It doesnt matter if you forget a few times as the longer the data pattern of time they have, you eventually remember for a regular purchase and use the card later. This is then picked up. IE if you only have a month of data and you dont use the card a few times, its harder to determine regular patterns than if you have 2 years worth (many months) and you can then see when they return to regular cycles.
Now this data is quite a lot. And if you use it at shopping centres, it includes a copy of the items you purchased. Thats info is sold now to companies who then target you personally re advertising. IE if you have dog or cat food as a regular shopping item over a period of time, you may see more ads in your post box for cat and dog things.
Now if you are fingerprinting someone, the longer the data period you have, the more you can work out those regular patterns.
This includes stuff like how many liters of fuel you go through in a week. (The have the data each time you swipe your flybuys at a petrol station as with the amount of fuel to the liter). They know where you live (you gave that info to flybuys or any credit card company really), they can discover where you work. They then can work out roughly by the distance you travel and the fuel you go through, what size car you drive.
Also can see when you do unusual things like take the car on a holiday trip. And confirm it when you fill up and the location of where you filled up is recorded.
So its the fact that its a LOT of data that is way more useful. Yes its a pain going through it, but you can 'train' a computer to do the work as they did re that computer that played Jeopardy in the US. It basically could 'learn' as it went how to better analyze the data it had access too very quickly.
While the data itself in large and long periods is extremely useful re patterns and fingerprinting and habits, a small amount or small span of time would be pretty useless.
And thats why they want to extend the data kept. To make it richer.. Sorry about the length :)