The increasing use of data mining by corporations and advertisers obviously creates apprehension from the perspective of the individual consumer due to privacy, security and the potential use of inaccurate information. The idea that there are data warehouses that contain customers’ personal information can be rather frightening. However, the use of data mining by these organizations can also lead to numerous benefits for consumers they otherwise would not have realized. Besides the obvious benefit of guiding consumers to products or services they’d be more interested in purchasing, the use of data mining by companies has also benefitted individuals’ health and financial safety.

Not long after the use of data mining came into prominence the use of data mining consumer information vs. consumer privacy became a major issue in early 1998 after CVS and Giant entered into an agreement with Elensys, a Massachusetts direct marketing company, to send reminders to customers who had not renewed their prescriptions. However, neither CVS nor Giant explained how the program would work or received their customers' permission to transfer their prescription records to a third party (Pyatt Jr.). Giant and CVS’s rationale for entering into this agreement was “to develop a positive program to benefit consumers, many of whom don't take their medication properly,” (Pyatt Jr.). Even though their primary intention was good, Giant and CVS were not transparent about their agreement with Elensys to their customers. In fact, customers were completely unaware of the program until they had the chance to read about it in the Washington Post. This non transparency to their customers about how they would use their personal medical information led to major backlash from their consumer base and eventually the agreement with Elensys was ended. Elensys’ use of data mining for marketing