Big data, how to balance privacy and social values

Big data is expected to bring forth enormous public good as well as economic opportunity. However there is ongoing concern about privacy not only from public authorities but also from private enterprises. Big data is suspected to aggravate the existing privacy battle ground by introducing new types of privacy risks such as privacy risk of behavioral pattern. On the other hand, big data is asserted to become a new way to by-pass tradition behavioral tracking such as cookies, DPIs, finger printing… and etc. For it is not based on a targeted person. This paper is to find out if big data could contribute to catching out behavioral patterns of consumers without threatening or damaging their privacy. The difference between traditional behavioral tracking and big data analysis from the perspective of privacy will be discerned.