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

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.

Re:Reminds me of Project Gaydar

[Anonymous Coward]

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

But do you know where to cruise for gays?

Bada-Bum!

Niggers.