Got a use for those BIG machines (wall street got there first)

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

DATA-MINING IS THE NEXT BIG THING FOR SUPERCOMPUTERS
        Big credit card companies, banks, airlines and insurers have
discovered massively parallel processing in an effort to divine which
consumers are likely to buy what products and when. A Gartner Group VP
predicts sales of parallel systems could expand tenfold to $5 billion by
1998 as a result of this new application. While marketing folks are waxing
euphoric, one business professor warns the fallout could be nasty if
companies start abusing their newfound info: "The companies doing this have
a big responsibility. Otherwise there will be an information Chernobyl."
(Wall Street Journal 8/16/94 B1)






and a related item




ONLINE SERVICES HAVE DATA MINES, TOO
        The online service you use has been compiling data on you too,
including your social security number, credit card number, demography and
interest areas. Using this and other data, CompuServe offers a service
called CompuTrace, which offers the last known address for any person in
the U.S. A similar service will tell you how long someone has had a
particular phone number or lived at a particular address and who else lives
there, and yet another service provides information on how to obtain
driving records, state by state. A bill was passed by the House last month
that would require all telecommunications companies, including online
services, to tell consumers what information is being collected, how it's
being used, and provide an opportunity to opt out. (Tampa Tribune 8/15/94
B&F 3)