The government is moving to expedite the use of massive amounts of personal data — collected online or otherwise from a variety of sources — for commercial purposes on condition that the data is processed to ensure anonymity of the information.

The move is in line with the Abe administration's position to facilitate businesses' greater use of "big data" for development, sale and advertising of new products and services. The government estimates huge economic benefits from the use of personal data, but it needs to take effective steps to make sure that people's privacy is not compromised in promoting the use of private information as a business tool.

With the advance in information and communications technology that enables quick and cheap collection as well as analysis of massive streams of electronic data sent from personal computers, smartphones and other devices, businesses in particular place high value on information such as people's gender and age, records of their Internet browsing and transactions, as well as the location of their smartphone handsets — which shows the movements of users — as tools for identifyng the needs and preferences of customers as well as their behavioral patterns.