Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Data Miner Will Shock You
MojoKid (1002251) writes "A new website sponsored by Ubisoft as part of its advertising campaign for the upcoming hacking-themed game Watch Dogs isn't just a plug for the title — it's a chilling example of exactly how easy it is for companies to mine your data. While most folks are normally averse to giving any application or service access to their Facebook account, the app can come back with some interesting results if you dare. Facebook's claims that it can identify you with 98.3% accuracy based on images.The Datashadow app also offers the ability to compare various character traits and gives a great deal of information about total number of posts, post times and inferred values about income, location, and lifestyle. Is Ubisoft actually performing some kind of data analysis? Almost certainly not. This is far from an exhaustive, comprehensive examination of someone's personality or FB posting habits. The companies that actually perform that kind of data analysis are anything but cheap. The point Ubisoft is making, however, is that your FB profile contains enormous amounts of information in a single place that can be mined in any number of ways. All of this information absolutely is combined and collated to create detailed digital profiles of all of us, and the more we engage with various online services (from Facebook to Google Plus), the larger the data pool becomes."
...I don't use Facebook. I'd keep away from it all if I could, but it's hard to be in the tech industry these days and have no/minimal online presence.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
would it be too much to ask for a link to the website you're talking about
You send ALL of your pictures and your phone number and your email address to this site..
Every morning you post everything that little mitzi and junior did at the ball game yesterday, as if anyone cares. You're favorite movies, books, TV shows, who you are in a relationship with. People will put EVERYTHING about them in their Facebook profile, and then they're surprised that it's easy for this company to track your habits, or for potential employers to screen you?
I think TFA was incorrect when they said "it will shock you". They should have said "it will startle non-technical people." But that's not as pithy, and not as attention grabbing, and doesn't get your article re-blogged on Slashdot.
John
Let's ignore for a minute how it is to navigate the internet through Tor. Let's also ignore for a minute that the FBI has compromised roughly half of Tor sites and that they control a fair number of Tor nodes. Why do you think masking your IP will help you at all when you log onto Facebook and *give them* all your personal data?
It's like a sick joke! They have a site that shows how much data they can mine (with your permission) and then they can do whatever they want with it?
So basically you give them access to all of your data, and then they tell you all about you.
What a shock.
I would be shocked if it drove people to stop giving up private information for free to facebook.
What shocked me indeed was the headline of the posting.
We have seen enough of these "This will shock you" in tabloids and lately even on CNN.
I am shocked to see this at Slashdot on consecutive two days.
Yesterday there was some other headline about how some rubber band shapes shocked scientists.
Let me read the headline and let me decide whether I want to be shocked or not. Why are you telling me that I will be shocked?
Pathetic!! Real pathetic!! Nothing turns me off more than the following three types of headlines.
"What this person said will shock you" ..."
"XXX did what to stop XXX ?"
"The five things every should
Slashdot is turning into tabloid. Instead of printing about trashy reality shows and gossip about royal families, they somehow find things related to technology. That's the only difference.
Slashdot, this had been a major turnoff.
Sigh!!