Virtually all sectors, institutions and digital users are affected by the innovative commercial potential of big data. Over time vast amounts of object data will become available for marketing and academic research, as well as purposes such as government planning and oversight, and will no longer need to be laboriously collected. By analysing user behaviour, standardised products, services and even prices can be customised.

Further developments in the search for undiscovered patterns and connections in large data sets are undermining data protection and privacy. Principles of fundamental rights, such as data minimisation, use of data strictly for the original purpose of collection, bans on further processing and a ban on data retention are rarely compatible with big data analytics.