Over the past 2 decade, with the exponential use of the internet, data has become easily collected and acquired, which in turn has translated to increase opportunity to mine the data for different and many purposes. Data mining has had a lot of exposure in the media and villainized to most degrees. To most people, it brings on emotions of suspicion and concern with the idea that data mining will be used to invade our privacy, and limit our freedom. Our personal data is collected in almost everything we do, from opening a credit card, to going to the clinic of our medical records, surfing Google on the internet, and purchasing an a gift for your mother online.

Data mining itself is the process of extracting useful, interesting and previously unknown information from large sets of data. The success relies on the availability of high quality data and effective information sharing. The collection of digital information by governments, corporations, and individuals has created an environment that facilitates large-scale data mining and data analysis. Data collection and data mining by itself is not illegal because it maybe necessary for managing the process it’s being used for. The concern for the private citizen is what and how the data will be used and the security of the data. Personal data privacy is a legitimate concern, with current privacy protection practice primarily relying on policies and guidelines to restric the types of publishable data and agreements on the use