Let’s just skip to the meat:
Digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including:
sexual orientation,
ethnicity,
religious and political views,
personality traits,
intelligence,
happiness,
use of addictive substances,
parental separation,
age, and
gender.
That’s just scary, especially when you think about the rich, connected, political animals behaind these huge companies. Now I know why I don’t use Facebook or Google and I hate giving up data and emails to see webpages etc. I don’t mind if the computer knows a bit and helps me shop in an on-line store I frequent, but when it’s used to funnel ads and promotions at me it starts to get worrying.
And you know the government can not be far behind in trying to get inside your wallet and home. (They already send around “confidential” census forms with your name and address at the top!
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior
Comments