Part I The Growing Data-Driven Economy, 2 Defining Big Data

Subject(s):

Market power — Free movement of IPR — Rights — Internet — Technology — National merger control

This chapter looks at the definition of ‘Big Data’. It focuses on personal data, which is generally defined as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual (data subject)’. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides a list of types of personal data which the chapter discusses. These are: user-generated, including blogs and commentary, photos, and videos, etc; activity or behavioural data, including what people search for and look at on the Internet, what people buy online, how much and how they pay, etc; social data, including contacts and friends on social networking sites; locational data, including residential addresses, GPS, and geo-location, IP address, etc; demographic data, including age, gender, race, income, sexual preferences, political affiliation, etc; and identifying data of an official nature, including name, financial information and account numbers, health information, national health or social security numbers, police records, etc.