Write About Everything

Besides home computers and retailers’ point-of-sale systems, we have Internet-connected smartphones, WiFi-enabled scales that tweet our weight, fitness sensors that track and sometimes share health related data, cameras that can automatically post photos and videos online and global positioning satellite (GPS) devices that can pinpoint our location on the globe, to name a few. On an individual account, they can quickly be alerted to red flags like purchases of unusual items, amounts the customer normally wouldn’t spend, an odd geographical location or a small test purchase followed by a very large purchase. Loyalty cards I’d always figured were ways to gather data on our purchases, but I hadn’t really appreciated how much similar data was being tied to us individually through debit/credit union fraud detection purchases until now, or the incredible detail about our lives that could be discerned from it. Someone can learn a lot about you just from analyzing your purchases. Big data analytics can be used to target relevant ads, products and services at the customers they believe are most likely to buy them, or to create ads that are more likely to appeal to the public at large. If you’re looking to bring on a qui tam attorney, visit Whistleblowers Against Fraud for more specifics.

No matter how established and accurate the accounting principles may be in a country, there will always be fraud. Forensic accountants investigate crimes within the field of finance, like fraud. It sounds a lot like Orwell’s Big Brother, and with ads from companies that seem to know what we’re doing and the recent NSA domestic spying revelations, it is understandable that some people find the massive amount of information out there about all of us disturbing. Learning to work effectively with and keep these groups happy, as well as competing with other CRAs, helped form the agencies we know today. You’ll find multiple definitions of big data out there, so not everyone agrees entirely on what is included, but it can be anything anyone might be interested to know that can be subjected to computer analysis. Businesses can use the information to improve efficiency and practices, such as finding the most cost-effective delivery routes or stocking merchandise more appropriately. Moreover, assuming fraudsters behave the same across all sectors is fairly naive, so a more elaborated domain-specific examination is reasonably required. Patterns across multiple accounts, like similar charges on different cards from the same area, can also alert a company to possible fraudulent behavior.

The same goes for accounts that creditors have turned over to collection agencies or charged-off — meaning that they’ve written the account off as a loss. Intelligence agencies can use it to, well, spy, and hopefully foil criminal and terrorist plots. Identity thieves can make use of all kinds of personal info, such as your mother’s maiden name, where you went to school or the name of your pet. Think of it as a “red flag” that encourages companies to take steps to verify your identity before extending credit in your name. Up next: the basics of protecting your identity. Additional research is being done with digital signatures. There’s also the implication that the data is being analyzed for some purpose. Arthur, Lisa. “What Is Big Data?” Forbes. Even though math is involved, big data analytics is not an exact science, and human planning and decision-making has to come in somewhere. Target received some press when it was discovered that they could pinpoint which customers were pregnant and even how close they were to their due dates from things like the types of supplements and lotions they were buying. Don’t forget weather and traffic sensors, surveillance cameras, sensors in cars and airplanes and other things not connected with individuals that are constantly collecting data.

Governments and privacy advocates have made attempts to regulate the way people’s personally identifiable information (PII) is used or disclosed in order to give individuals some amount of control over what becomes public knowledge. Data centers, also called server farms, can distribute batches of data for processing over multiple servers, and the number of servers can be scaled up or down quickly as needed. Still, we’re probably too far down the rabbit hole for any of us to be entirely off the radar. Instead, she found herself in an even bigger hole. Companies are now even starting to do things like send real-time ads. Some companies are using the information to do things like check potential customers’ credit worthiness using data other than the typical credit score, which can be good or bad for you, depending upon what they find and how they interpret it. It can include all the digital information floating around out there in the ether of the Internet, the proprietary information of companies with whom we’ve done business and official government records, among a great many other things. These are Free Money From Government for everyone. As such, ratios are calculated to quantify the relation between two financial items and to subsequently define acceptable legitimate values.