Facebook Ads Could 'Out' Gay Users

itwbennett writes "Researchers at Microsoft Research India and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany have written a paper showing that a users may be inadvertently revealing their sexual preference to advertisers. 'One example was an advertisement for a nursing program at a medical college in Florida, which was only shown to gay men. The researchers said that persons seeing the ad would not know that it had been exclusively aimed at them solely based on their sexuality, nor would they realize that clicking on the ad would reveal to the advertiser, by implication, their sexual preference in addition to other information they might expect to be sent, such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address.' For its part, Facebook 'downplayed the study, saying that the site does not pass any personally identifiable information back to an advertiser.'"

Comments

Rule number 1

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule number 2: Clicking an ad sends information you didn't know was on your facebook to your parents and your boss.

Re:Rule number 1

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You mean your rainbow flag PNG and the photo taken on Sir Ian McKellan's lap didn't give it away? How about that status update: "You GO girl!"

Re:Rule number 1

[rainmouse]

Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss.

Being fired for content on my facebook account about my private life is just a labour saving service. It saves me the hassle of having of having to research if I'm working for snooping, big brother dickheads and then quitting.

Re:Rule number 1

[Dunbal]

Clicking an ad turns you gay, according to TFA.

Re:Rule number 1

[couchslug]

"Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss."

Never put anything on the internet you wouldn't post on 4chan.

Re:Rule number 1

[pspahn]

Which these days is pretty much everyone. Self-employment ftw.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule number 3: Facebook is ghey.

Re:Rule number 1

[AnonymousClown]

Clicking an ad turns you gay, according to TFA.

It's a good thing I turned off the ads here on Slashdot! One accidental click and BAM! I'm gay!

I don't think I clicked on any ads in the past....

geeze! I gotta do something about the color scheme in this office! It's just so......oh no.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some potent voodoo!

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss.

Being fired for content on my facebook account about my private life is just a labour saving service. It saves me the hassle of having of having to research if I'm working for snooping, big brother dickheads and then quitting.

So do you work for a place that drug tests? Because drug tests are not like a breathalyzer. A breathalyzer tests whether you are drunk right now and therefore would be completely appropriate for a workplace. It does not test whether you've had alcohol in the last 1-4 weeks without distinguishing whether you did so on your own time or your employer's time.

Drug tests, on the other hand, make no attempt to distinguish your employer's paid time from your own private time away from work. The employer's only legitimate concern is whether you are sober while you're on the job. What you do in your private time is between yourself and the state. Yet it lets them be snooping, big brother dickheads and monitor your private time too. Like Facebook, it's a way for them to find out "oh no, you did something we don't approve of, so now we're going to punish you for that." They stupidly do this no matter how productive you are as a worker and even though you, as a professional, maintain a clear separation between your private life and your working life.

Employment is becoming more and more like running for public office. It is increasingly ruling out all except for two classes of people: the goody two-shoes who never broke a rule in their life because they worship authority with no regard for its legitimacy, and the dangerously deceptive who are very good at living double lives and covering up their tracks. This is not good for society. Some of the wisest and best among us made mistakes and did things they were not proud of before they saw the error of their ways and became better people. The trend now is for every little thing, including victimless crimes, to become a permanent stigma that forever closes doors in your life.

One other related topic. Why is there even such a thing as an arrest record? I can understand a conviction record, but an arrest record? Really? What kind of fascist wet dream is that? Fascists just love thought processes like "well, he must have been doing SOMETHING wrong even though the state with its overwhelming resources couldn't come up with evidence of that" as though the police are omniscient and never make mistakes, as though false accusations are never made. Really fascists love any reason to turn someone else into a second-class citizen, especially if that person has done them no harm and has no ill intent.

What REALLY amuses me is the sheer irony of those who would enforce their Puritannical beliefs on others at every opportunity because the person did something that offends their "Christian values" while forgetting that anyone who has ever actually read the words of Christ knows that Jesus's main teachings were forgiveness and non-judgement. It's not only Christians who do this, of course. There are many secular fascists. It's just extra ironic when people who call themselves Christian display such hypocrisy to cover up their authoritarian eagerness to condemn.

Re:Rule number 1

[fabioalcor]

Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss.

... and your wife/girlfriend and your kids and and your friends and your enemies ...

Re:Rule number 1

[xenn]

such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address

By the way, just keep using Facebook. It's the tool of choice for the dumb masses.

Oh, it's so damned simple isn't it? I suggest you Tool off back to ToolLand (R) (TM) ..tool

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

A co worker (who is gay), was sending around a screen shot of his facebook page as a quick and easy way to show some of us what a third person we all knew but were not "facebook friends with" was he posting. In the screenshot was ads obviously relating to being gay. We already know the guy is gay but if we didn't, it would have raised some suspicion.

Re:Rule number 1

[Threni]

Rule number 3 - ad blockers are free. Use them.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Never put anything on Facebook.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, I'll quote that first line again, for some reason, even though it's totally irrelevant:

such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address

And then farther down, the line I am actually going to respond to:

Oh, it's so damned simple isn't it? I suggest you Tool off back to ToolLand (R) (TM) ..tool

Yeah, it's so damn simple. Real simple. Stupid simple. Any-moron-can-understand-it simple. Here, let me show you. Do any one of these three things and you will NEVER have the problems we keep seeing article after article about.

• Find a service that really respects you instead of viewing you as an exploitable resource to be plundered whenever possible, or
• Use Facebook and use it responsibly by never disclosing anything you wouldn't want the whole world to know, or
• Realize how easy it is to live a full abundant life without Facebook (Protip: people communicated with friends before Facebook existed, and if Facebook goes away they will do so after it is gone)

That simple enough for ya? Go ahead, find a flaw in any of it. I dare you. If you can't, then YOU sir are the tool because between us, you're the only one who can call people names but can't articulate his position. Will you be humiliated by an AC? Let's find out. If you take the coward's way out and ignore this post, the reason why will be self-evident.

Your move.

Re:Rule number 1

[shentino]

That's because drugs they test for are illegal.

And it's not illegal to test for illegal drugs simply because you have no defense. You can't use unclean hands to fight it.

It even has probative value as a demonstration of your willingness to follow orders and directions, which includes obeying the laws that make drug use illegal.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Drug tests determine whether you are a criminal or not. A business has the right to disallow criminals from working for them. If you have problems with drug laws, try to debate them, but just because you failed a drug test doesn't make your former employers dishonorable; it just means you failed to respect the society you live in, and it therefore failed to respect you back. Period.

The question is whether the conditions you describe must be met by your employer and cannot be satisfied by the relationship between a citizen and the state. Because drug testing and the related administration costs are nothing but expenses for a business. Why should they take on those costs and either charge more to their customers and/or deliver less profit to their shareholders just to enforce a law of the state? If they should be doing that, why stop at drugs? Why not have employers test employees for willingness to use violence, traffic violations, tax evasion, and fraud? Surely a con man who hasn't been caught yet is no less of a danger than a drug user who hasn't been caught yet.

According to what you've said, the ultimate respect a corporation can show for its society is to act as a private enforcement agent for all of society's laws, not merely victimless-crime offenses. Why then do they fall so short of your standard?

Re:Rule number 1

[kenj0418]

Clicking an ad turns you gay.

I don't think that's what it means when they say malware "installs a backdoor into your system".

Re:Rule number 1

[demonlapin]

You knew it was there. You just didn't realize that it might be visible to people you didn't think could see it. Parent applies: don't ever put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't put on the evening news.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Clicking an ad turns you gay, according to TFA.

Here is an mp3 that can turn you gay...

Re:Rule number 1

[pookemon]

I thought it was the use of Facebook that did that... Or is it that using FB makes you dumb, clicking ads turns you gay.

Re:Rule number 1

[davester666]

Now it makes sense. It's just poorly written english, where the writer meant "installs a system in your backdoor".

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing was said about being a "private enforcement agent", and that is not at all what they are doing. Instead, they are stating, unequivocally, that they are an entity that operates within society. I would not harbor a criminal in my house. Businesses have every right to decide the same. You are not entitled to be granted asylum by a legal entity that prefers not to employ those that live outside the law. It has nothing to do with enforcement (which would involve actively pursuing violations); it's merely the business choosing who to employ.

That doesn't explain it -- why this one crime? Why a victimless crime, of all the vices you could test people for? Why do employers hire agents to collect and chemically test someone's urine but do not hire agents to visit their homes and check for domestic abuse? They are equally intrusive, show an equal amount of distrust and scrutiny, only domestic abuse actually involves a victim. If anything that should be done before drug testing, though of course neither should be the concern of an employer until and unless they measurably affect work performance.

Most businesses do, in fact, perform background and credit checks before hiring. So they do, in fact, test for fraud, and federal crimes. It's for the same reason.

Sure. The difference is that a court of law found that the person has actually committed a crime and convicted him or her. The court did this based on a much higher standard of evidence. The court also did this as its proper role in an official capacity. It did not act as an unofficial private enforcement agent.

Unlike employer drug testing, in court you actually do have a legal right to appeal a false conviction. Oh yeah, and before the court could do anything, there first had to be probable cause and a reasonable premise for searching the suspect. Unlike employers, cops can't just search people for the hell of it and that's for some damn good reasons. Employers having this power isn't more desirable than cops having this power. Neither should have it and both for the same reasons.

The whole fucking thing is a rejection of "innocent until proven guilty".

Re:Rule number 1

[Hylandr]

I can see that leading to a torrid gay porn flick ala "28 days later". Bumping butts with an 'infected' individual in turn infects you and the process goes on until everyone is playing robot unicorn attack.

- Dan.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to say that people have the right to work at businesses even if the business doesn't want them there?

Saying "why not this other crime" does not excuse the fact of illegal drug use being a crime. There are, assuredly, more crimes they could investigate, but what they are testing for is a crime. Businesses are not bound to a higher standard of evidence; it's YOUR job as a candidate to show THEM why you should get the job they are offering, and something YOU can do to show your hireability to THEM is to demonstrate that you do not use habit-forming substances in violation of the law. THEY are not the ones with something to prove. YOU are.

Re:Rule number 1

[fractoid]

Rule number 2: Clicking an ad sends information you didn't know was on your facebook to your parents and your boss.

Rule number 3: Your parents and your boss are advertising for gay nurses?

Re:Rule number 1

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

That particular quote was actually directly from TFA. It was included in TFS in quotes. I suppose the submitter or the editor could have resorted to dishonestly misquoting the article, or could have quoted like this:

"...such as their IP [the expansion of the abbreviation IP] address..."

It's kinda telling that, as soon as an article tries to explain one of the privacy issues on Facebook to the "dumb masses", you deride it, and tell us to "keep using Facebook". It's almost like you don't want to share that smug feeling of superiority with the dumb masses.

Re:Rule number 1

[wisnoskij]

Because if I add my boss to Facebook and then call him names and say how I hate my job on my wall (something that he has to see if he used Facebook regularly) then he did something wrong?

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule 34...

Re:Rule number 1

[MRe_nl]

Clicking an ad turns you gay, unless you're at c:

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that leading to a torrid gay porn flick ala "28 days later".

Amusing, but points lost for not following through with the obvious parody titles, i.e. "28 Lays Later" or "28 Gays Later" :-)

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted my dick on 4chan, and it became a meme.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the New York Times, LA Times, London Whatever, Moscow Truth ....

Basically, if you don't want it known in the world, be careful what you do online, not just on facebook.

Re:Rule number 1

[mahadiga]

Never put anything on Facebook that you would not tell your parents and your boss.

And Wife.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you want us to have fun with you at your expense, listen to this guy.

Re:Rule number 1

[BenFenner]

That alternative to public arrest records are secret arrests.
What is really a check on the judicial system has slowly turned into something it was never meant for. However it still serves the main purpose of preventing secret arrests.
Say it with me one more time. "Secret arrests are worse than a public arrest record."

Re:Rule number 1

[SleazyRidr]

If you hate your job, you should probably try to find another one.

If you're just 'venting' you should know to only do it with your friends and not in front of the whole world.

Re:Rule number 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes that doesn't even help.

Uhm... right.. that's because they're so ethical r

[Anonymous Coward]

FB seems a little ethically challenged.... HEY! /. uhhh... you wouldn't disclose MY identity to FB now would you!!!!

(Please stay anonymous.... please stay anonymous...!!!!)

Step 3 PROFIT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man do you need underpants or do you need underpants?

Re:Step 3 PROFIT !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure that facebook could out-gay any underpants or profits therefrom.

Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

The ads were served to males who declared themselves to be interested in other males, and females who declared themselves to be interested in other females.

Exactly where is the problem here? The users are outing themselves. Shouldn't this be filed under, "...and water is wet"?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[corbettw]

The problem is that, if you click on the ad, now the advertiser has a record of who's gay and who's straight (the study showed that variants of the ad were displayed to users based on their gender and orientation). Just because it's on your Facebook status, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[LBArrettAnderson]

I've never been a paranoid one, and even in this case I don't think it's a *huge* deal (it's certainly a deal, but not a huge one), but I think what they are getting at is that this gives them the ability to connect the dots. Say you have an ad for a job opening that is only shown to gay people. User clicks said ad, and is sent to a specific entry point which can be recorded. User proceeds to apply for job. I'm not sure that this can cause much damage... if they weren't looking for gay people they wouldn't have posted ads to the... but I can definitely see paranoid people not liking this (and I'm not saying they are wrong in feeling this way, just that I'm not quite as paranoid). I'm sure a lot of people have their sexual orientation public on facebook, but don't tell their coworkers or employers (Oscar from the office until season 3 episode 1, for example).

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[TaoPhoenix]

Exactly, and this is different than "Joe likes Red Cars" because it starts tying in a preference that has social implications.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

If it's on your Facebook status, and you don't have it covered with restrictive privacy settings, you de facto do want the world to know.

I'm all for privacy being respected, but if you put something out there, and don't take the proper precautions that it be hidden if you want it to be, it's on you, not on Facebook. They can't make it much easier to control who sees what. The kind of concerns being raised here were valid maybe a year ago.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

Just because it's on your Facebook status, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know.

see what you did there? kinda contradicted yourself. if you post something on a site that's ABOUT sharing information with the world, (that openly has told people that several times) and only pretends to keep information private so people will stop thinking about it: it's public.

as much as people want to keep secrets, they seem to be really REALLY -REALLY- fucking bad at it. if you want to keep your preferences a secret: don't post them in "a secret corner of the internet"... there are none.

and for the record: I have a public facebook profile, that contains VAST amounts of data about who I am, where I am, even how to get a hold of me. I like people to be able to get any information they want about me: regardless of the scope of that. I have NO illusion's of privacy to my information on the net. the internet is a bulletin board: anybody can post, anybody can read, and anybody can edit. at anytime. with OR WITHOUT making a note about what they did.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[hedwards]

I'm not aware of anybody being raped for liking red cars. Being raped for being gay, definitely happens. Because clearly gay men are just confused, it couldn't possibly be for other reasons.

Which is really your point. Given the degree amount amount of homophobic bigotry and violence, I'm not really sure that FB should be facilitating anything like this. Plus, is there really a legitimate reason to be advertising things which aren't gay specific to only gays? I mean I can understand targeting gay bars to gay men, but nursing school?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just RTFA, and I didn't see any mention of whether the sexual orientation was being hidden via the privacy settings at all. If it is, and if Facebook's own policies say they won't allow this, then I don't see anything wrong with calling them out on it. Call it fraudulently sharing people's personal data.

Note, I don't use Facebook, and don't really know what they're exact policies are regarding this type of stuff.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[geekoid]

It's on facebook the moment that claim it's private.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[MichaelKristopeit 98]

more importantly, a fact you're completely ignoring, just because it's on your facebook status, doesn't mean it's true.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Monkeedude1212]

It's not even an issue with privacy settings though. I just read this part of the summary and went, "uhh, well yeah, duh!"

The researchers said that persons seeing the ad would not know that it had been exclusively aimed at them solely based on their sexuality, nor would they realize that clicking on the ad would reveal to the advertiser, by implication, their sexual preference in addition to other information they might expect to be sent, such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address.

So essentially, if you had been on any site, and you clicked on the advertisement from any website, your IP address would get sent so that you can be redirected from the adserver to the website. (This is how they know the Ads are working, if it was a direct link to the website, the adserver wouldn't be the proper referer). So now the adserver has your IP and will use BY IMPLICATION your sexual preferences. Seriously, this doesn't even DEAL with Facebook.

So the question is whether the ad is being shown to them based on their information - whether Facebook is giving up the information in the first place. Now thats a big doozy. It hasn't been proven, but its highly suspected. I would normally think that Adservers are catering to me based on my IP, but I've had other people use my computer and its shocking how the ads immediately cater to them after starting a facebook session.

Then there's this juicy nugget.

For its part, Facebook 'downplayed the study, saying that the site does not pass any personally identifiable information back to an advertiser

Emphasis mine. Well - no, it's not sending it BACK to the adserver, the adserver hasn't made a request yet. Facebook says to itself "I need to load a page. There's going to be an advertisement here. Hey advertising server, here's who is lookin'" and the Adserver serves up the correct ads.

Devil's in the details, right?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

Sure, but I think this is a problem on the user end. It doesn't have anything to do with Facebook, per se. If a user is paranoid about it, they can hide their preferences from non-friends or simply not disclose it.

I'm not saying people don't have a cause to be cautious about what to disclose to whom. I'm just saying that it looks to me like Facebook gives you all the tools you need to avoid disclosing things you don't want to disclose to strangers.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bieber]

The issue is that you could have your information set to private, but it will still be used by Facebook's advertising system to determine who to show ads to. So while a potential employer may not be able to look you up on Facebook and find out that you're gay, they could find out that you had clicked on an advertisement that had been served exclusively to gay users (although the ad may not have indicated in any way that it was only targeted at homosexuals). It's an awfully sneaky way to get around privacy settings, basically.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

I think you're misunderstanding something. You can make sexual preference private, or not. Hell, you don't even have to disclose your preference, if you don't want to. Now, if advertisers are somehow getting around people's privacy preferences, and accessing that information without it being public, that's certainly a Facebook problem, but I don't see anywhere in TFA where it says that.

The only problem I see in the article is that advertisers aren't supposed to be using sensitive demographic information (sex, gender, presumably sexual preference) to do the targeting. But that's already a violation of Facebook's policies. Facebook should deal with that, I suppose, but even if they do nothing, users can still control what advertisers see. If sexual preference is the kind of information you consider to be only your (or your friends') business, you should configure your profile appropriately. At best, the researchers are causing a tempest in a teapot. There's a fairly easy fix that anyone can implement, without Facebook having to do anything.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[corbettw]

Did you not read the article? This was information that was marked as private, but obviously is not. That's the problem.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[russotto]

If it's on your Facebook status, and you don't have it covered with restrictive privacy settings, you de facto do want the world to know.

But this can happen regardless of your privacy settings. You set your profile to include the fact that you are gay. You make that private, and manage to keep it private no matter how many times they change things. But the fact that it's private doesn't mean advertisers can't target ads based on it. So the advertisers set up an ad which doesn't look like it has anything to do with sexual preference, but is targeted to gay men. Now anyone who responds to that particular ad is known to have a facebook profile they are saying they are gay men. Of course, the opportunities for abuse are large. The example in the article of a nursing program, for instance : perhaps anyone who applied to the program via THAT ad would be rejected out of hand.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

The only problem I can see for Facebook is that advertisers are violating their policy not to show ads based on sensitive demographic information (age, sex, presumably sexual preference). They certainly need to crack down on advertisers violating the policy, but users still have the ultimate control over how much they share. Advertisers don't need to know your sexual preference unless you made it public. And if you made it public, whose fault is that?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

I'm sure paranoid people wouldn't like it. But paranoid people have the option of either hiding their sexual preference or omitting it altogether. It's not required information, and it's not information that's required to be public.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had gay targeted ads show up on my facebook before. It has been awhile though. My sexual preference is left blank, but I must have an unusually high percentage of gay male friends. I'm out to most people so it didn't out me or anything, but it was kind of scary that it could correctly guess my sexual preference.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

This was information that was marked as private, but obviously is not. That's the problem.

Did you read the article? Nowhere does TFA say that the information was culled from people who'd marked their sexual preference as private. All the article said was that the users didn't know why the ads were served to them, because that wasn't disclosed. It also said that it's against Facebook policy to target users based on "sensitive" demographic information (age, gender, and presumably sexual preference). If the article had said that sexual preference was hidden by the users, that would be worth a story.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

But this can happen regardless of your privacy settings. You set your profile to include the fact that you are gay. You make that private, and manage to keep it private no matter how many times they change things. But the fact that it's private doesn't mean advertisers can't target ads based on it.

Do you have a source for that information? The article doesn't say that advertisers are targeting private information, or that they can see private information.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Nikker]

I have to admit I'm curious, why would someone rape another man because he has sex with other men? Do heterosexual male rapists avoid lesbians on principal and moral or did I miss something?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[causality]

but I can definitely see paranoid people not liking this (and I'm not saying they are wrong in feeling this way, just that I'm not quite as paranoid).

I really don't know what has happened in the last several years. The desire that people not know information that is none of their business is suddenly described as "paranoid", a term for a medical disorder. This is absolutely bass-ackwards. In fact, it's downright pathological and a great example of Newspeak. It so clearly serves those who wish to deny privacy that it's bordering on the miraculous that most people don't notice. Really, only large masses of people could be so stupid/blind/oblivious/whatever you want to call it.

I say we turn the tables. Let's stop using words like "paranoid" to describe people who want random strangers to leave them alone. Instead, let's choose a word that's the inverse of "paranoid" to describe the asshats who intrude into the lives of others and then claim that data as their own to use as they please. I tentatively suggest "Orwellian" but am open to suggestion. Maybe Panopticonians would work, except that fewer than six syllables would be a plus.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[causality]

I'm sure paranoid people wouldn't like it. But paranoid people have the option of either hiding their sexual preference or omitting it altogether. It's not required information, and it's not information that's required to be public.

There's that word again. Please see this post. I'd be interested in your feedback.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Arancaytar]

So if your options are set not to display a profile field to people other than your friends, does that also mean Facebook will not use it in targeted advertising?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[veganboyjosh]

Rape is rarely about sex. It's usually about power.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[causality]

Rape is rarely about sex. It's usually about power.

Sounds like rape and politics have a lot in common.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[WillDraven]

The example in the article of a nursing program, for instance : perhaps anyone who applied to the program via THAT ad would be rejected out of hand.

So they're going to spend money on an advertising campaign to solicit applications from.. people they don't want as clients?

What?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude. if you're gay just come out. we're all ok with that.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Runaway1956]

"Just because it's on your Facebook status, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know." Wait. (looks ^ at address bar) It says yro.slahsdot.org up there. Damn, I thought maybe it was portal.twilight.zone or some such. DAMMIT man! Have you been paying attention, or not? EVERYTHING ON FACEBOOK is accessibly by anyone with the will to snoop. It doesn't even require much skill - just the will to snoop. One more time: if it's on the intartubez, it ain't private. Go to the blackboard, and write that one thousand times for the class, please.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well same goes for if you tell facebook you like video games and they advertise video games. They do this, and if you click, they know it's for reals! Oh no! So what? Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with being gay either. Don't click the ad if you don't want them to know stuff.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ads were served to males who declared themselves to be interested in other males, and females who declared themselves to be interested in other females.

Exactly where is the problem here? The users are outing themselves. Shouldn't this be filed under, "...and water is wet"?

That is not true. FB seems to assume that any adult male that is "in a relationship" but nothing else is gay.

When I first signed up to FB, I put in the minimum information and left most stuff blank. It kept on giving me these ads for various dating services. I don't cheat on my girlfriend, and I didn't want to get those ads.

So, I changed the relationship status from not specified to "in a relationship". At once, I got gay-oriented ads. I tried to ignore them, but when it became continuous I changed the "interested in" section from not specified to "women". The gay ads vanished and the dating service ads reappeared!

Sheesh.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[siriuskase]

Has nothing to do with your privacy settings. It has everything to do with clicking on an ad that only a member of a targeted group can see. If you can click on the ad, you must be a member of the target group.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[cheekyjohnson]

"If it's on your Facebook status, and you don't have it covered with restrictive privacy settings"

I thought that (at least, I heard they used to) Facebook sold some of your personal information no matter if you had them hidden with 'privacy' settings or not. Is that not true?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Gender is "sensitive demographic information"? Of all the possible things for advertisers to know about the probable user on the other end, this is one that I'd find least objectionable. I have no interest in being shown advertisements for MaxiPads, and I suspect there are a limited number of women who have an interest in being shown ads about NFL football.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

The issue is how the person displaying the ad knows you're a member of the targeted group. It's my understanding that they can only know it if you display it publicly on your profile. If that's not the case, then that's different, but I haven't yet read anything to convince me otherwise.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

I was using paranoid in the layman, common usage sense. I'm certainly not saying that someone worried about their Facebook settings has a clinical mental disorder. In fact, I was only using the word because LBArrettAnderson used it in his post responding to my original post. If you'd rather use the phrase "security-conscious", that's fine by me.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

I agree, but gender is part of the policy:

"Any targeting of adverts based on a user attribute such as age, gender, location or interest, must be directly relevant to the offer and cannot be done by a method inconsistent with privacy and data policies."

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[shentino]

Does that also count if you get hacked?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[causality]

I was using paranoid in the layman, common usage sense. I'm certainly not saying that someone worried about their Facebook settings has a clinical mental disorder. In fact, I was only using the word because LBArrettAnderson used it in his post responding to my original post. If you'd rather use the phrase "security-conscious", that's fine by me.

It really takes a big man to admit that there may be a better way, or even an alternate way for that matter.

The thing is that "paranoid" really does have a definite meaning. That meaning has become blurred due to over-usage. This is like a hypnotic state of suggestibility. Common usage makes something accetpable, while acceptability makes something take on a fuller and fuller connotation. It so happens that all of this works in favor of the anti-privacy side of things. The very best thing about human beings is that they can get used to almost anything. That's adaptation. The very worst thing about human beings is that they can get used to almost anything. That's complacency. When intrusion becomes the norm, this is what you find.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[zippthorne]

Uh... The ad was for a nursing school....

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Runaway1956]

Define "get hacked". Were you socially engineered? Or, did someone spend the time and effort to try logging into your account with every combination of passwords possible? Or - did someone exploit a weakness in Facebook? Actually, yes, it applies no matter what. If you have an account, and you specify your gender, and people find out that you actually have a gender, no surprise. If you specify that you are a gender bender, and people find out that you are bending genders, again, no surprise. If you state that you have no gender (how would that happen, I wonder?) and people learn that you have no sexual organs at all, one more time, no surprise. If it's on the web, it's "out there". If you don't want me to know what you are doing with the dog in your back yard, DON'T PUT IT ON THE WEB!!!

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

I understand that paranoid has a definite meaning. My parents both work in the mental health field. But, rightly or wrongly, "paranoid" also has a layman's meaning. It so happens that the layman's meaning of "paranoid" is closer to the clinical meaning than you get in a word like "schizophrenic", which to the general public means someone with a split personality. The difference between "paranoid' in the layman's sense and in the clinical sense is just a matter of degrees. Paranoia is an irrational fear that someone or some group is out to get you. While there's a lot of rational fear about security on the Internet, I do think some of it's irrational. (Some people have an excessive fear of cookies, for example, without having an understanding of what they are and what they're actually tracking.)

Concerning Facebook specifically, I think it's important to recognize that nothing going on here is actually intrusion. The users are in control of how much they share, and to whom. (Again, if someone can show me documentation that says that advertisers can access information for targeting purposes that isn't made public, I'll change my tune, but I haven't been made aware of that yet, and if it's the users' choice what they share with advertisers, then it's the users' fault when that information is used to target them (regardless of whether Facebook has a policy about what information can be used to target them).

I agree with you that complacency is the enemy. The problem is, if you tell people that it's someone else's problem if the information that they willingly posted gets used in ways they don't like, you end up with people who're complacent about security, and think they don't have to be careful what they post. And that's to no one's advantage but the scammers.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[TaoPhoenix]

Way too much in common. You know there's midlevel bureaurats fapping to all the little ants under their control and surveillance.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm out to most people so it didn't out me or anything, but it was kind of scary that it could correctly guess my sexual preference.

Plenty of people could correctly guess if you are gay. If we haven't said anything, it is probably because we don't care.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[drsmithy]

"Just because it's on your Facebook status, doesn't mean you want the whole world to know." Wait. (looks ^ at address bar) It says yro.slahsdot.org up there. Damn, I thought maybe it was portal.twilight.zone or some such. DAMMIT man! Have you been paying attention, or not? EVERYTHING ON FACEBOOK is accessibly by anyone with the will to snoop. It doesn't even require much skill - just the will to snoop. One more time: if it's on the intartubez, it ain't private. Go to the blackboard, and write that one thousand times for the class, please.

There is a difference between walking around 24/7 with a sign that says "I am X", and being prepared to confirm "I am X" if someone specifically asks about it.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[pjt33]

I don't see any controls which allow me to share something with anyone who specifically looks at my Facebook page, but not with advertisers. But besides that, if it's against Facebook policy for advertisers to use certain data, why are Facebook giving that data to the advertisers in the first place? If there's a specific set of data which they may use, pass them that data, and don't pass them a primary key which allows them to scrape my public page.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

To the best of my knowledge, there are no controls which allow you to make your profile information public, but not available to advertisers. You have to make the choice whether you want the information to be fully public, or available to just your friends. I have to imagine, though, that if you don't want advertisers to have access to information, you wouldn't want the general public to have access to it, either.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

Technically, it's the advertisers that will use it or not. Facebook just allows access to the data (with your permission, through your privacy settings). Some people commenting on this story seem to believe that advertisers have access to your information, even if you make it private. It's not clear to me that this is true, but if Facebook is allowing advertisers to target users by personal information that's not made public, that's a fairly large privacy problem. Does anyone have information that Facebook does allow advertisers to target people who don't have that information public?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never been to nursing school. Instead of having to consult my gaydar all I have to do is look around. Male, check. In nursing school, check. Hi, how are you :D

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

Advertisers should not be able to see it on Facebook. Whether they turn around and sell private information to those outside of Facebook, I don't know.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[straponego]

Peepers? Eavesdroppers?

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Voyeur" would have worked, but now it's chic or hip to be a voyeur (what with webcams and all), and governments now outsourcing video camera monitoring to the great unwashed, it's become official public policy. Other common terms don't carry the punch you want: intruder, interloper, busybody, gatecrasher, meddler, eavesdropper...
Perhaps "scopophiliac" is obtuse enough to make people assume it's close to something horrible.

There you go, let's pour on the hatred for those fucking sicko scopophiliacs.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[Anonymous Coward]

So your well-reasoned position is basically "only a fag defends a fag", yes?

Fucking dipshit.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[YodaYid]

Hear, hear! (I don't have mod points, sorry)

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[mux2005]

I say we turn the tables. Let's stop using words like "paranoid" to describe people who want random strangers to leave them alone. Instead, let's choose a word that's the inverse of "paranoid" to describe the asshats who intrude into the lives of others and then claim that data as their own to use as they please. I tentatively suggest "Orwellian" but am open to suggestion. Maybe Panopticonians would work, except that fewer than six syllables would be a plus.

How about "data nympho(maniac)s" or "data sluts". They have the abnormal drive to give their personal data to everyone. "nymphomaniac" is also a good counterpart to "paranoid" because it's derogatory and (at least used to be) a medical term.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[BenFenner]

When I joined Facebook (later than most around me but still quite a long time ago, before most of the huge changes in design and structure) the way they asked for your personal preference data was much different than they way they ask now (I assume). In the past when clicking on check boxes about why you were joining Facebook (I chose "Networking" among other reasons) it then asked the user to click on who you were interested in [meeting and becoming friends with on Facebook] and presented you with a choice of "Males", "Females" or you could check both. I was interested in being friends with both so I chose both. I didn't think anything of it.

Then slowly this preference turned into a sexual preference as understood by the users of Facebook. Slowly but surly the innocuous choice of Male/Female in the database had users treating it like a sexual preference field instead of a general friendship preference field (in my opinion). Then it was explicitly treated by Facebook's grammar and site syntax as a hard and fast sexual preference field. However, many people like me have both checked when we are not sexually interested in one or the other sex.

This isn't something revolutionary or extremely bothersome but it is an odd situation. What once was a database field designed for possibly one purpose has melded slowly into meaning something quite distinctly different. It would appear that those like me who have a memory longer than a couple of nanoseconds and move slowly and deliberately even in this rapid-paced tech world of ours get to see something happening that maybe others don't. Did you realize this had happened?

This also raises bigger, ethical issues with more important databases. What happens when the public reception, syntax and grammar surrounding a database entry changes yet many of the database members hasn't "gotten the memo"?

(Yes I realize I can change my "preferences" in the FB database in this instance, but that is not the point and I am a stubborn bastard so I haven't based on principle and I don't particularly care who incorrectly thinks I'm bisexual.)

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[BenFenner]

The ads were served to males who declared themselves to be interested in other males, and females who declared themselves to be interested in other females.

I didn't declare myself to be sexually interested in both males and females. See my reply to you above.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[bhartman34]

That's a great point, Ben. I can vaguely remember when I signed up for Facebook, and I'm sure that's how I took it, too. (I didn't fill that part out, though.)

The problem with Facebook in general is that it's been re-purposed. If you remember back that far, Facebook was originally meant to be a place where college students could socialize. Its usage has extended far beyond that, though, so some of the things that the original database was meant to do don't apply. Many people now (myself included) use Facebook primarily to promote themselves in their chosen careers, and end up having many more "friends" on Facebook than they have actual people they're friends with. The "interested in" field has gone through a similar change. I've seen many people online who I know personally are not bisexual, but you'd think they were from their profiles, the way they're treated now. I think that's one of the more troublesome usage changes that Facebook has seen, second only to the influx of corporate profiles.

Re:Which part of this is "inadvertent"?

[jpkunst]

Rape is about sex. Sex is about power.

Cowboys fans, beware!

[GodfatherofSoul]

We're on to you...

Re:Cowboys fans, beware!

[geekoid]

You caught me, I'm a grits lover.

Re:Cowboys fans, beware!

[pspahn]

You can't be trolling if you're just ripping on fans of a rival team. Have a sense of sportsmanship modder.

soooo.....

[Dthief]

outed by clicking on stereotypically "gay" ads......what do you expect.....you do things labeled as gay, or follow things labeled as "gays' interests" and people will assume you are gay.

Plus the ads were targeted at people whose profiles explicitly said they were gay, so how was anyone/any fake profile "outed"

Re:soooo.....

[geekoid]

If only someone would write an article explaining what the problem is...~

Re:soooo.....

[TaoPhoenix]

That's two fierce posts so far which are doing the "narrow interpretation of the facts" thing.

The thing is, maybe you outed yourself under one site, maybe even a pseudonym, you get served a certain ad. That advertiser sells that site's user info to its other marketing partners. Except because the user entered their info to something else, and now that ad ring has a preference attached to that email address anywhere on the net.

This is seriously in "well *this time* they restricted it to openly declared profiles, but *next time* it will get served to anyone who has pink chickens in Farmville."

Re:soooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't understand. Facebook has a policy saying they won't disclose personal info, like what age you are.

Now, suppose an advertiser says "target this ad at people born in October of 1978" ... Facebook says "OK". So all of these people's birth months are revealed to the advertiser, in violation of the policy. Thru essentially costless micro-targeting, advertisers (or any attacker with $) can dig out whatever info they want. There's a simple and obvious way for an attacker to get a list of people based on a piece of information Facebook has said they're keeping private.

There is a big difference between someone clicking on an ad for, say, a gay-dating site -- when you click on an ad, you know you are implicitly signaling some level of interest in its content to the advertiser -- and clicking on an ad (*any* ad, it could be for a car or for dog food ... the content of the ad could have *nothing* to do with the audience targeting) that happens to be targeted based on a specific database query.

If a piece of information is promised to be kept private, private should not equal "disclosed to third parties who pay us."

Re:soooo.....

[pspahn]

Sorry for stereotyping, but it's like the way a lot of them speak. They sound gay. Why exactly is that? Is it because they want to speak that way or is it some kind of genetic thing? Seriously.

Re:soooo.....

[Bill Dog]

The problem is that in general, disclaiming use of any "personally identifiable information" is cover and a ruse. What consolation is it if major web sites know almost everything about me except my name? I don't want to be identified, but that doesn't mean I don't mind being catalogued out the wazoo. My personal characteristics are part of my identity, afterall.

A nerdy analogy: A database table has columns for every possible personal characteristic of human beings, except their name or SSN or other fairly uniquely identifying single-valued field. Well, the whole damn row is a fairly unique, composite key. Pinpointing me. So it's a distinction without a difference.

Re:soooo.....

[insufflate10mg]

No, you don't understand. Facebook has a policy saying they won't disclose personal info, like what age you are.

You're 100% right. Sexual orientation, however, is not private and is publicly displayed - there is nothing to "disclose," the user discloses it to the whole internet voluntarily.

Re:soooo.....

[compro01]

AFAICT, the "gay lisp" appears to either be a myth or is a regional thing. None of the gay men I know exhibit it in the slightest.

Re:soooo.....

[siriuskase]

Many times, the little label your parents attached to you is the least valuable bit of data in the database. Demographics, credit card or ss#, even home address are more valuable. I don't care who I'm robbing, I just care if he's got lots of money and leaves his house unguarded.

Re:soooo.....

[Abcd1234]

To be honest, I think you're burying the lead, here. The real question is, why the hell is Facebook sending the id of users who click on ads back to the advertiser? If the goal is to track unique clicks, you could just as easily hash the id before sending it on, thus disconnecting that id from the fb account itself.

Re:soooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Either pink chickens in farmville = you are gay, and thus you are already outing yourself

OR

pink chickens has nothing to do with your sexual orientation and you have been outed as being a pink chicken owner. I would say dont do things publicly that you cant stand behind.....like a pink chicken.

Re:soooo.....

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAICT, the "gay lisp" appears to either be a myth or is a regional thing. None of the gay men I know exhibit it in the slightest.

Some I know do, some I know don't, of people I know that do, ALL are gay. Maybe cultural, or deliberate self identification?

Interestingly enough, I can hear the effect of heroin in a users voice, even over the phone. To me, it is so pronounced that I have difficulty understanding how anyone could take heroin without everyone knowing, yet addicts have been known to regularly fool their family and friends. Perhaps the "gay lisp" could be more or less pronounced depending on the person and other people could be more or less sensitive to hearing it? So you could be not attuned to it at all, only noticing an exaggerated parody, me being slightly attuned to it, noticing it sometimes and someone else reliably identifying gays by it.

Note, this isn't my opinion, just a possibility that occurred to me right now.

Re:soooo.....

[straponego]

There could be other reasons to click on ads-- humor value, etc. But really the lesson people should learn from this is: never click on ads, at least on Facebook.

workaround is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mention in your FB profile that you are gay, or a member of this or that race or ethnic group or have such and such religious beliefs.

Second workaround: don't join FB.

Third workaround: don't clickthru on ads for nursing programs for men.

Re:workaround is obvious

[pspahn]

don't clickthru on ads for nursing programs for men.

I'm not really sure what makes male nurses gay. My ex-gf is a nurse as are all her friends, and of the guys I met that are nurses, none of them were gay. I get the whole maternal desire to care for people and that it might attract a higher-than-average amount of gay men, but being a male nurse does not make you gay.

Re:workaround is obvious

[Kamel Jockey]

... but being a male nurse does not make you gay.

That's because everyone knows that SPIDER-MAN will make u gay.

If they didn't know

[Dayofswords]

[...]such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address.

If you don't know what IP stands for in 'IP address' then you're on the wrong site.

Re:If they didn't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, so it's not an Intellectual Property address!

Re:If they didn't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of wrong site, how many here are
- Facebook users
- who click ads?

So Facebook is serving targeted advertising...

[TermV]

Isn't this the point of Facebook? Let's be honest, Facebook is a marketing platform that provides a social networking service in return for payment in the form of your personal information. You post information about yourself on the site, and the site serves you targeted advertising. If you tell Facebook your sexual orientation then you've outed yourself already. It would be a different story if they were analyzing your friend list and your "like" pages and deducing that you were gay. Then you'd have grounds for outrage.

This just in...

[Nethemas the Great]

Facebook makes money by data mining its users.

Re:This just in...

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

news at eleven.

Re:This just in...

[insufflate10mg]

Wrong. Facebook makes money by providing users with a place to post information about themselves publicly. The point of using Facebook is to provide information to the public, and accept or deny communication with third parties accordingly. Nothing forces anyone to click an advertisement; the /. crowd is just extremely sensitive to issues that may have anything to do with Facebook privacy concerns.

Re:This just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot posters out gay Facebook posters anyday!

Re:This just in...

[YodaYid]

What on earth are you talking about? Facebook makes money off ads and marketing data. Period. Users voluntarily (and involuntarily) provide Facebook with specific information that's valuable to marketing companies. Facebook encourages its users to do everything on Facebook (photos, events, fan pages, etc) for the purpose of collecting sellable information.

Facebook may also make money on complex marketing reports - why do you think companies like MasterCard and Foot Locker now advertise their Facebook portal instead of their own website?

The point of TFA, and the study that it cites, is that advertisers are obviously able to target users based on sexual preference, which means Facebook is sharing this information with marketers.

Obviously, you missed this article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/01/21/179242/Facebook-Master-Password-Was-Chuck-Norris

Re:IP

[TaoPhoenix]

The MAFIAA is furiously trying to make "IP" mean "Intellectual Property" in the public mindshare. The ugly thing is when you smash both acronyms into the same sentence you get Halloween Horror.

"I recorded that this IP is stealing my IP and demand he be sued into bankruptcy".

OK...

[Lanteran]

there's a spot in there for filling out sexual orientation, you suddenly are surprised that you're getting highly directed ads? OTOH, you're using facebook, and you're surprised that you're getting highly directed ads?

Re:OK...

[zerocool^]

According to several of my (very out) gay friends, putting your sexuality on facebook tends to lend its self to a lot of random messages from people who want to meet up at truck stops.

No joke.

Re:OK...

[TubeSteak]

According to several of my very not-gay friends, having someone switch your sexuality on facebook tends to lend its self to a lot of random messages from people who want to meet up at truck stops.

Re:OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to several of my (very out) gay friends, putting your sexuality on facebook tends to lend its self to a lot of random messages from people who want to meet up at truck stops.

According to several of my very not-gay friends, having someone switch your sexuality on facebook tends to lend its self to a lot of random messages from people who want to meet up at truck stops.

Conclusion: Truck drivers are so horny they would fuck a snake if someone would hold the head.

Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Khopesh]

A year ago, some MIT undergrads wrote up a short piece called Project Gaydar which showcased how they were able to successfully identify gay men who were still in the closet.

Facebook might not expose this information directly (via the "sexual preferences" profile information), but your friends list is enough to extrapolate it. Since there's money in that kind of data and it is easily fetched via the Facebook API, it's being done.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day someone claiming to be straight complained, either here or on reddit, about seing facebook adds targeted for gay people.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[pspahn]

From the article you cited:

The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions,

Sounds like they didn't actually "successfully identify gay men" to me.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago, my friends at the time got onto my myspace account and set my preference to "Gay". Every single ad was for gay hookups.

Not sure what the point of this is. It's just an obvious target to data mine.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Lanboy]

This happened to me, but I found out that I had messed up my profile questions. FUNNY. If you check that you are interested in people of your own sex, facebook does the math, and targets advertisements likely to be interesting to what they presume is your sexual orientation. I know where to go to buy a gay cruise, for instance.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I know where to go to buy a gay cruise, for instance.

But do you know where to cruise for gays?

Bada-Bum!

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Anonymous Coward]

/* XXX: This assumes that females can be gay but that's a misnomer so the property should be called homorate */
subject->gayness = (subject->gender == male) ? (1.0-(1.0/fact(subject->friendc))) : (1.0/fact(subject->friendc));

So, this is awkward.

[hedwards]

FB just totally came out of the closet and everybody has missed the point. Can a website even be gay? Isn't that just a matter of improperly coding the API?

Avoid clicking on adds!! Use AdBlock!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come out of the closet at your own time...

ROFLCOPTER

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "new punctuation" is gay.

Facebook Ads Could Out-gay users

[iSzabo]

This is how I originally read the title; I was promptly sadly mistaken.

You know how I know you're gay?

[cobrausn]

You click on ads on Facebook.

Does not pass any personally identifiable info...

[Anonymous Showered]

Facebook DOES pass personally identifiable information, albeit inadvertently.

As a Facebook Ads user, I have tracked down people who have clicked my ads EASILY.

How?

Your unique Facebook user ID is passed through the refer string each and every time you click on an ad.

Simply copy down this ID and paste it in the USERID variable below.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=USERID

Tada.

Rule # 3

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU DONT talk about fight club

Doubt it

[WillAffleckUW]

My icon on FB was a pic of the Seattle Space Needle with a rainbow flag on it, but FB still has advertisers acting like I watch Fox News and like NASCAR, so I'm not that worried about it.

Even if I am straight, liberal, and think NASCAR is a waste of gas.

Heuristic algorithms are only as good as the programmers - or AI.

So I screwed up my profile and initially...

[Lanboy]

Said I was interested in men rather than that I was a man. So I got some really really gay targeted ads. Gay dating services, special razors to shave with, all very fun. Try it and see.
The real issue is that the current terms of service allows yhem to share your groups and interests, which likely can identify you as being close to the GLBC.

 

Lesson learned from a previous incident

[microbee]

I sometimes hang out on a web forum, and they have a special forum where you could post anonymously - it's not really anonymous, as you still need to login and post, but the postings do not show your user id or IP addresses, so it appears totally anonymous, except to the web admins. So people post a lot of random crazy stuff there which would embarrass themselves if it had not been anonymous.

Then one day the forum upgraded their software, and due to a bug, all posts inside that anonymous forum suddenly showed all user IDs - including the old ones. That quickly turned into a sh*tstorm as people ran around screaming in panic with their underwear.

The lesson: do not post anything if you don't want others to find out it's you.

Re:Lesson learned from a previous incident

[shutdown -p now]

Then one day the forum upgraded their software, and due to a bug, all posts inside that anonymous forum suddenly showed all user IDs - including the old ones. That quickly turned into a sh*tstorm as people ran around screaming in panic with their underwear.

Oh, to do that with Slashdot and watch the fun.

Actually *checks the mental post history* um, never mind that.

Re:Lesson learned from a previous incident

[initialE]

afaik the only forum that truly allows anonymity coupled with verifiability (that is to say nobody can impersonate your online personality) are the 2ch-style boards, including 4chan. For those who don't know, you can key in any nickname you want when posting, but trailing that is an encrypted hash of whatever password you attached to it - therefore no 2 people can post using the same nick. No registration, no verification emails, no password, no mothers maiden name.

Re:Lesson learned from a previous incident

[rdnetto]

IIRC, /. is actually designed not to store the details of which user made the post. It got mentioned when they took down a post because the CoS threatened to sue.

Wait, what?

[Arancaytar]

Are male nurses required to be gay?

Re:Wait, what?

[guyminuslife]

Yeah, exactly. This is why we have a national shortage of nurses. It's because straight men don't want to go into a profession where their job title is the same as the word for "have a baby suck milk form your boobs." On the other hand, there's no shortage of male "paramedics."

Re:Wait, what?

[guyminuslife]

I don't get the funny mod. I was being 100% serious. Nursing isn't a "manly" enough field, there's a social stigma (albeit, a shrinking one) attached to being a "male nurse," so many men who would otherwise be talented at it shy away; this has caused real shortages in healthcare.

Ideally speaking, there should be more women in engineering as well, but fortunately for current engineers' supply/demand curve, there aren't.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are male nurses required to be gay?

My son is training as a nurse at the moment, the course has approx 20% men, of those men, approx 20% are straight. So i guess the answer is that its not a formal requirement, but...

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they sure are

Facebook trust means nothing

[Greymoon]

Facebook has your info, thank you. Your fucking privacy means nothing to them and they will sell it whenever it suites them. Buy a fucking clue.

"Facebook 'downplayed the study...."

[Hasai]

"....saying that the site does not pass any personally identifiable information back to an advertiser.'"
....Unless there's money involved.
];)

Re:Does not pass any personally identifiable info.

[serano]

Do that many people actually click on ads? I don't think I ever have, not on purpose anyway.

MY IP!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! They will get my IP! Oh god! Noooooo!!

Let me set the record straight

[Chewbacon]

No pun intended. The case in point above fails to justify facebook practice as there are few gay male nurses, albeit more than lesbian nurses. I though facebook said Microsoft was smart and innovative? That's just inaccurate or maybe doesn't mean much to a slashdot reader.

It's a matter of trust

[devleopard]

Facebook's massive failure re privacy is pretty much the status quo, no need to rehash that.

However, let's presume a person treats their sexual status as something super secret, worthy of protection. You know, so secret that at the very least, they keep it from their general "real-world" social network, if not their closest friends and family. This involves care: watching how they talk, walk, dress, and who they associate with. Yet when it comes to websites run by strangers they're more than willing to let it all hang out. Hmm.. there can only be a reasonable expectation of privacy when there's a reasonable exercise of privacy.

Where do you specify sexual orientation on FB?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked at my FB profile, and I don't see where they even ask for my sexual orientation. Do they infer it from people's relationship status or something?

Re:Where do you specify sexual orientation on FB?

[BetterThanCaesar]

A combination of "Gender" and "Interested in".

What facebook ads?

[Stan92057]

What facebook ads? :)Im not a facebook member and if i was i still wouldnt see the ads :)

YouTube thinks I'm gay

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably unrelated but your youtube viewing habits may also send the advertisers (sometimes erroneous) clues on what you enjoy as evidenced by the ads you are served by the site. For some reason youtube thinks that I am gay, that I would like to study cinema and that I need to find jesus... (none of the three being true, unless allmighty google knows more about me than I do)

Re:YouTube thinks I'm gay

[hattable]

It would be more interesting if facebook had a way to (similar to youtube) guess the orientation of the users. Invasive? Yeah whatever -- as stated many times before what you post online is everyone's business. Better still would be a page that you could view all of the things facebook "knows" about you.

Lazy or malicious, you decide

[pavon]

It is the old HTTP referer leakage problem.

When you click on any link on any site, the browser sends the URL that the link was found as part of the HTTP request for the linked page. This is useful to webmasters as they can see who is linking to them. This becomes a problem, however, if the URL contains private information encoded into it.

For example, when you are logged into facebook, the URL of the site contains your user id. Thus any* website that is linked from your facebook page will see your user id when you click on their links. To avoid this, sites shouldn't contain sensitive information in their URLs. Alternately many sites use redirectors that cause all links go first to the redirector, and then to the final destination, so the linked site sees the redirector as the referer, not the original URL. *Facebook has implemented a redirector for links that users post, but conveniently forgot to apply it to advertisers.

And yes, after being pushed on this issue for over a year, they are finally talking about hashing user ids in URLs.

FB lying?

[mysidia]

For its part, Facebook 'downplayed the study, saying that the site does not pass any personally identifiable information back to an advertiser.'"

If Facebook allows advertisers to target their ads to be seen by people whose personal information has certain values, then by definition, they have passed that information to anyone who clicks on that particular ad.

The advertiser can then bind that info to their IP, and if they click on other target Ads later, there is a possibility for a single advertiser to gradually discover more and more personal 'facts' about the user.

Who clicks ads anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't understand. Facebook has a policy saying they won't disclose personal info, like what age you are.

Now, suppose an advertiser says "target this ad at people born in October of 1978" ... Facebook says "OK". So all of these people's birth months are revealed to the advertiser, in violation of the policy. Thru essentially costless micro-targeting, advertisers (or any attacker with $) can dig out whatever info they want. There's a simple and obvious way for an attacker to get a list of people based on a piece of information Facebook has said they're keeping private.

There is a big difference between someone clicking on an ad for, say, a gay-dating site -- when you click on an ad, you know you are implicitly signaling some level of interest in its content to the advertiser -- and clicking on an ad (*any* ad, it could be for a car or for dog food ... the content of the ad could have *nothing* to do with the audience targeting) that happens to be targeted based on a specific database query.

If a piece of information is promised to be kept private, private should not equal "disclosed to third parties who pay us."

What modern savvy internet user clicks on ads anyway? I soon discovered that I could not determine the destination of a Google ad before clicking it, so I now refuse to click any of them. It is easy for spammers to setup an ad and direct the user wherever they want them, the ad text (and link shown) often have no relation to the destination. I have much better luck and I'm on the whole safer using "organic" search results to find what I need. I also advise all my clients and users to never click on ads of any type and they thank me for the advice.

Data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be full into Facebook, until I gained my current job at a direct marketing business.

The place I am at now data mines everything that is publicly available; from the Facebook to the MySpaces, LinkedIn, every social site. From YellowPages, to Google results, it scrapes press releases, public government records to competitors websites.

Of the 10k businesses just in my town I can bring up a friend map and tell you which business owners are the most connected, and its frightening how this data is used.

In the 2 years I've been here I've seen our unsolicited rate go from low 1% to high 4%. We run such highly targeted campaigns now that we only target 3000 to 5000 key people and get the exact same, if not better results then historically targeting the whole city of 1 million.

It's crazy, I now don't ever use social sites because I can contest your information is worth a fortune.

With 4 full time developers your information is just going to be worth even more!

Pride is a luxury

[electrosoccertux]

reserved for those who can find a job in this climate if fired.

No they don't

[gillbates]

Drug tests determine whether you are a criminal or not.

Two points:

1. In the first place, it's a global economy, remember? Drugs illegal in the US are not illegal everywhere in the world, and there are places where drugs illegal in the US are sold openly. The presence of illegal drugs in a person's system *does not mean* they have committed a crime.
2. Civil disobedience has been the manner of changing bad law in the US since President Lincoln. From prohibition to ending racism, people did illegal things to bring about desperately needed social change. Regardless of whether you believe drugs are the epitome of evil, or the embodiment of freedom, the tool of effective legal reform in this country has *by and large* been the popular disregard of immoral and unjust laws.

While I personally do not believe the currently illegal drugs are good for society, I cannot in good faith apply punitive measures to someone who honestly believes otherwise. The problem with our society is that we cannot move forward toward a freer society without civil disobedience, and unfortunately that means that even people in the wrong have to be granted due deference with respect to their illegal activities because what most would consider the "normal" means of changing unjust laws are simply ineffective.

Re:No they don't

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement may have been too strong. But the private sector is not held to "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I do agree with you about the importance of civil disobedience. That's quite simply not the issue here. We are discussing privately held companies. Or, in other words, you would not be the one acting punitively -- the employer would. If an employer chooses to value "deference with respect to their illegal activities", or to take the stance that drug use is not a bar to employment, they have every right to do so. That they do not reflects solely upon the business in question -- and each business has (and should have) the right to make their stand on that matter.

Re:No they don't

[T-Bone-T]

In the first place, it's a global economy, remember? Drugs illegal in the US are not illegal everywhere in the world, and there are places where drugs illegal in the US are sold openly. The presence of illegal drugs in a person's system *does not mean* they have committed a crime.

That makes no sense at all. You are employed to work at one location, typically. If you are assigned another location, it is often for an extended duration during which you follow the laws of that location. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. The economy may be global but your place of work is not. People don't work in Somalia one day, Germany the next, and Chile the day after that.

Re:No they don't

[gillbates]

Not like anyone ever takes a vacation to Europe, or visits relatives in Asia, anyway. And those jobs which send you overseas to help a client are long gone, right? Honestly, a post like this is more depressing because of what it says about what has happened to our financial prosperity than about drug use. There was a time in America when people regularly travelled overseas for vacations, education, and business.

Re:No they don't

[gillbates]

Doing as the Romans do is how people doing business in Europe end up with drugs in their system. The last two jobs I've held routinely sent people overseas.

Re:No they don't

[T-Bone-T]

The point I was making is that the economy may be global but laws are not.

Re:Does not pass any personally identifiable info.

[Anonymous Coward]

They fixed this a while ago.

Facebook has ads?

[advocate_one]

I see no adverts...

Re:Facebook has ads?

[dufachi]

Thank goodness for Adblock Plus. Facebook can tell the world I'm a lesbian, but I will not see their ads to share it with advertisers.

Out-gay Facebook users?

[mopower70]

Isn't that like trying to out-troll ACs on Slashdot?

I've been "outed" becuase I exist

[Loundry]

My biggest worry (but it wasn't that big of a worry) about facebook when I signed up was the fact that I state myself "in a relationship" with another man. I like facebook for giving one thing: details about the goings on in the lives of people I care about that I wouldn't have known otherwise. And that is very powerful and very significant. That aside, I've been friended by old acquaintances pre-coming out and surprise!

Then again, maybe it wasn't that much of a surprise to those people. People do talk outside of facebook. But there's no question about it now -- no pretending with a lot of people who might have had only suspicions before. The ads that might be shown to me concern me the least. Then I think about whom the study may intend to protect.

Note to gay teenagers: It gets better. Hang in there!

Non sympathy

[Loundry]

Plenty of people could correctly guess if you are gay. If we haven't said anything, it is probably because we don't care.

Plenty of people do NOT correctly guess that I am gay. I'm a software developer. I wear a wedding band. I like football (NOT soccer). When I open of mouth to speak, rainbow glitter doesn't spray out.

Person: (sees my wedding band) So, what's your wife's name?

Me: We're not married.

Person: (confused) Why not?

Me: Because the state will not allow us to marry.

Person: (ultra confused and not getting it) Why would they not allow you to marry?

I've had that conversation multiple times. I hate coming out to people. I would much rather someone else tell them when I'm not anywhere nearby. Coming out to a straight person is just saying this to someone's face: "Hi, I'm gay, which means I probably do all sorts of sexual things that you find incredibly disgusting. Now, judge me positively. I'm waiting."

Keen in mind that some gay guys could dress up as the ugliest, most offensive drag queen, and there would still be some straight people who STILL could not correctly guess. There's a whole spectrum of being clued-in.

I appreciate that you don't care. Honestly, I do. It makes life easier for gay people who live in a world where there's a great many people who DO care and are willing to do something about that problem.

Is it just me, or...

[Anonymous Coward]

did anyone else read that as: Facebook ads could out-"gay" users?