Invisible Data – Data You Record, But Don’t Realize

In just one day, when sick at home, I generated the following digitized data. If all of this information were to be aggregated (much of it is), it could be used to track someone’s every move, and predict their future movements. It’s quite alarming how much information that is saved in digital forms, when we are not even trying to generate data.

Health Information

  1. Temperature Readings
  2. Medicine Dosages
  3. Calories / Dietary Intake
  4. An almost constant GPS location

Writing & Communication

  1. Assignments
  2. Text Messages
  3. Audio Clips / Video Clips
  4. Research Notebook

Entertainment

  1. The time, order, volume, precise location, artists, and song information that I listen to on Spotify. Additionally, how much each song is played for.
  2. A list of websites (browser history), what I did on those websites (cookies), what I looked at on those web sites (ads, Google/FB), Key strokes (Microsoft, Samsung), Mouse movements
  3. Video playlists
  4. The lengths and times that my phone is on

Finance

  1.  Bank account transaction info
  2. Credit card transaction info
  3. Tip amounts
  4. Itemized Receipts
  5. Referrals to purchase orders
  6. Times / Types of items purchased

Intentional Data – Data that is created with explicit intent to create data

  1. Homemade Movie animation frames.
If someone were to have all of this data – they would be able to do quite a lot with it – much of it bad. Even more interestingly, most of this data is generated as a side effect – whether from something simple like having fun, or something critical to life like buying grocery items.