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 know it's true.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I'd place a small wager that Ubi partnered with Wolfram Alpha on this - I did the Watch Dogs thing about a week ago, and thought it was actually a quite coolly stylized representation of basically very close to what WA spits out as analysis of my Facebook profile. I wasn't shocked. Rather, I thought it was pretty trick marketing, and was impressed.
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?
Pity the article did not mention it: the site can be found at http://digitalshadow.com/ It seems to be US only, though.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I don't have facebook, so the shock, is on you! hahahaha
There's this line in the article that says "people with similar beliefs tend to cluster together" -- it may be my best defense against datamining me. The people I have on my Facebook - account pretty much have nothing in common with me except for family members, and even they only share blood with me. If you were to base your opinion on me on the people that have added me to their circles you'd pretty much be totally off the course.
Using this one weird trick!!!
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?
I feed most / some my profiles with false information. The email address that I use for sign-ups gets most of my spam. The land line that I use for sign-ups goes to a two ring answering machine with a short message and minimum time to record the spiel. The intentional misspelling of my name shows up on my junk snail mail. The multitude of birthdays that I have show up regularly. I sign up for emailing lists that I have no interest in, then after awhile remove myself from said lists. Those are just some of the things done.
Passionately Indifferent
believe that slashdotters' posting habits and contents of their comments are of no mining interest to anyone?
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?
Some of the same entities who maintain databases on you also develop and maintain personal profiles on you. This includes things like ability to defer gratification, sexual promiscuity / addiction, likelihood of having an STD (and which one(s)), sexual fetishes level of argumentativeness or agreeableness, your rank on a scale of respect for or defiance of authority,,(authoritarian scale), detailed political beliefs, number of past boyfriend or girlfriends and whether you were dumped or dumpee, likely personal frailties (vanity, you think you're too fat, you think you're smart, you conduct yourself with an exaggerated sense of entitlement). All o this is derived from FB ad other places and is used to profile you in various contexts from advertising to getting a job to loan applications to security checks and personal "risk profiles".
Trust me. .
I use Facebook quite a bit. I also leave nearly all of my information as viewable publicly. This digital shadow app couldn't even accurately present information that is publicly posted or information to which it was given implicit access by logging in through Facebook. Location, Active times, close friends, income.. All completely wrong. I think that page is just a ruse to gain access to your Facebook information, which will then be used for other purposes.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I would be shocked if it drove people to stop giving up private information for free to facebook.
Sidenote: While you are reading this, 6 trackers on slashdot.org are tracking you.
Just saying.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Facebook Data Miner Will Shock You
No, no it won't. But only six words in I already feel like this story is treating me like an idiot. Nice.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
That's what Ghostery is for...
Also:
echo "127.0.0.1 facebook.com" >> /etc/hosts /etc/hosts /etc/hosts /etc/hosts /etc/hosts
echo "127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com" >>
echo "127.0.0.1 facebook.net" >>
echo "127.0.0.1 www.facebook.net" >>
echo "127.0.0.1 s-static.ak.facebook.com" >>
We could not log you in: You can't log in to this app because you do not meet this app's requirements for country, age or other criteria.
I am the shadow, and the smoke in your eyes, I am the ghost, that hides in the night.
Bow before your elusive target!
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!!
FB logins are now required more and more to do things online.
A favorite radio station I listen to this morning mentioned all requests now must come via FB login.
Can't they see how utterly wrong this is?
It amazes me that anyone has to have this explained.
Then there are government entities, cities, counties, etc, that are requiring FB logins to communicate or connect with them.
This is so utterly wrong on so many levels.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range