Menu
  • About
    • Staff
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
  • Partners
  • Training Courses

NETUCATION Blog
Be Smart & Safe Online

Menu
  • Home
  • Contact Us

Blog

26Mar

On Facebook, you are what you like

webmaster March 26, 2013 Respond

When Facebook users clicks on the ‘like’ button, they are not only approving a video, a friend’s status or a page, they are revealing more than they think about themselves to perfect strangers.

A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge have analysed 58,000 Facebook users’ Likes and were able to paint a very detailed picture of a given user with an accuracy rate of more than 80%, Cnet reports.

Passing each user’s Likes through their algorithms, researchers correctly guessed a user’s sexual orientation in 88% of cases. When identifying ethnicity there was a 95% success rate compared to 85% for political leanings.

“Likes represent a very generic class of digital records, similar to Web search queries, Web browsing histories, and credit card purchases,” the team of researchers said. “In contrast to these other sources of information, Facebook Likes are unusual in that they are currently publicly available by default.”

The researchers also warn users of misuse of these publicly available data. “Commercial companies, governmental institutions, or even one’s Facebook friends could use software to infer attributes such as intelligence, sexual orientation, or political views that an individual may not have intended to share,” they concluded. “One can imagine situations in which such predictions, even if incorrect, could pose a threat to an individual’s well-being, freedom, or even life.”

source: euronews

Share:

  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Twitter

Google Ads




← Previous Next →

Featured Professor

When Facebook users clicks on th...

Read more

Hours & Info

88 Xavier Street
Robertsham
Johannesburg
2091
+27 011 210 3900
help@netucation.co.za
Dinner: Monday to Friday, 09h00 to 17h00
  • facebook

Recent Comments

  • malerato sekha on Contact Us
  • Trevor Watkins on Baby’s privacy exposed on LinkedIn
  • Ramon Thomas on Contact Us
  • Thandokazi yawa on Contact Us
  • Webmaster Nisha on Why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants school kids to learn coding

Copyright © 2021 NETUCATION Blog.

Powered by WordPress, Supreme, and EducationAcademy.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.