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."

Comments

Pointlessly shocking the sheep.

[nimbius]

Anyone who has a legitimate concern for their privacy and personal security has absolutely rid themselves of google plus and facebook. It didnt take a clever app to convince us, foiled fedoras or not, that we were as much a product as a herd of free-range cattle. our cud would be our status, the apple our friend request. We were to spend lazy afternoons basking on the hillside in the glow of farmville and grow strong and fat on content from friends and our mobile devices. This app is the same as working a stun bolt in front of a heiffer. Sure its loud and gets a response every time, but one must wonder if the audience ever truly understands its ultimate implication.