dark data

dark data pl (plural only)

1. Data that are unanalyzed, inaccessible, or not organised in such a way that they are readily available.
   • 2018, Shoshana Zuboff, chapter 7, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:

     For those who seek surveillance revenues, dark data represent lucrative and necessary territories in the dynamic universal jigsaw constituted by surveillance capitalism's urge toward scale, scope, and action. Thus, the technology commmunity casts dark data as the intolerable “unknown unknown” that threatens the financial promise of the “internet of things.”

   • 2020, Tim Harford, “Rule six”, in How to Make the World Add Up, Bridge Street Press, →ISBN:

     But that diagnosis of what had gone wrong was incorrect. Later research showed that the real problem was dark data. Shortly after the election, researchers chose a random sample of houses and knocked on the door to ask people if and how they voted.