Ebook: The Right To Be Forgotten – Is Privacy Sold Out in the Big Data Age?

The potential of big data has exceeded the expectations of most organizations. However, despite
its vast importance and application, some important aspects of big data remain the subject of
debate. One of the most sensitive and worrisome issues for big data is the privacy of personal
information. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the major theories of philosophical
ethics may be used as a referential framework for conceptualizing the evolution of the concept of
privacy of personal information in the big data era. We identify a gap in big data research and
suggest that while privacy has been extensively explored in different settings, it has not been
sufficiently studied relative to the social and technological changes in the big data era. We
attempt to fill this gap by proposing that the study of privacy be closely tied to the evolution of
the social structure.
Keywords: Big data; Data analytics; Information privacy; Ethics; Human rights