Re: It's got me wondering...
"I have concluded that neither those collecting nor those using this data actually care about its veracity."
I came to the exact same conclusion when it comes to data gathered and used for marketing purposes.
Even for non-marketing purposes, spookfooding was always an effort that seemed to be of dubious effectiveness. Today, when you have a large number of powerful data mining tools available relatively cheaply, it seems even more dubious.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
