data exhaust

[ dey-tuh ig-zawst ]

noun

, Computers.

1. unstructured information or data that is a by-product of the online activities of internet users:

   Collecting and analyzing data exhaust can provide valuable insight into the purchasing habits of consumers.

Word History and Origins

Origin of data exhaust¹

First recorded in 2010–15

Example Sentences

There was also a lot of “data exhaust,” as the security technologist Matt Mitchell calls it, a polite term for the record of my life rendered in Google searches, from a 2011 query for karaoke bars in Washington, D.C., to a more recent search for the closest Chuck E. Cheese.

From New York Times

Google’s scientists learned how to extract predictive metadata from this “data exhaust” and use it to analyze likely patterns of future behavior.

From New York Times

It feels like 99 percent of the time when people are talking data exhaust, retention, what’s your footprint, it’s in the context of corporate cybersecurity, maintaining the status quo.

From The Verge

Corporations gain access to the minutiae and intimate details of daily life when we enter our behaviors into self-tracking devices, acquiring our data for free—something scholars call “data exhaust.”

From Scientific American

The problem is not data breaches: it is “data exhaust”, the information that is produced as a byproduct of our digital lives.

From The Guardian