Sexuality, political leanings and even intelligence can be gleaned from the things you choose to “like” on Facebook, a study suggests. The findings should “ring alarm bells” for users, privacy campaigners said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21699305  The Facebook likes were fed into algorithms and matched with the information from the personality tests.The algorithms proved 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate in distinguishing African-American from Caucasian-American and 85% for differentiating Republican from Democrat.Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases and relationship status and substance abuse was predicted with an accuracy between 65% and 73%. The study will be music to the ears of social media firms keen to make more money from customers via personalised marketing.” I can imagine situations in which the same data and technology is used to predict political views or sexual orientation, posing threats to freedom or even life,” “This research should ring alarm bells for anyone who thinks that privacy settings are the solution to protecting information online. We need to fundamentally re-think how much data we are voluntarily sharing. Sharing individual likes or pages might not seem hugely intrusive, but it allows individuals to be categorised and behaviour predicted in areas that are far more personal and sensitive than people realise.”
“Yet again, it is clear the lack of transparency about how users’ data is being used will lead to entirely justified fears about our data being exploited for commercial gain.”