Researchers Release Profile Data on 70,000 OkCupid Users Without Permission (vox.com)

An anonymous users shares a Vox report: A group of researchers has released a data set on nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid. The data dump breaks the cardinal rule of social science research ethics: It took identifiable personal data without permission. The information -- while publicly available to OkCupid users -- was collected by Danish researchers who never contacted OkCupid or its clientele about using it. The data, collected from November 2014 to March 2015, includes user names, ages, gender, religion, and personality traits, as well as answers to the personal questions the site asks to help match potential mates. The users hail from a few dozen countries around the world. The researchers, Emil Kirkegaard, Oliver Nordbjerg, and Julius Daugbjerg ran software to "scrape" the information off OkCupid's website and then uploaded the data onto the Open Science Framework, an online forum where researchers are encouraged to share raw data to increase transparency and collaboration across social science.

Comments

Re:Bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually I met a greek woman living in Germany (via ok cupid). She used her real name and was surprised that I did not. She was absolutely not aware that basically no one is using his real name on a web site, except perhaps Facebook or Linked in.
She was not dumb, the idea to use a nick simply never occurred to her.

On the other hand she was a bit strange ... she is a teacher for greek and ancient greek. While talking about the subjects she emphasized that greek is so complicated for foreigners because it has three genders. So I pointed out there are plenty of languages which have. She looked surprised and asked for an example. I said: e.g. German? She contemplated nearly a minute and then very surprised said: "Yes, true! German also has three genders!"

She spoke perfect german! And she never realized german has three genders just like greek!

The funny thing is: certain stuff is switching gender from language to language. E.g. a cat is female in german but male in french/italian. Or the moon, is female in latin languages and male in germanic languages. So it must have been a topic during her german learning ... nevertheless she never realized it.

Real names not revealed

[swell]

from TFA: "The data dump did not reveal anyone's real name."

Usernames, etc, were revealed. A clever person might be able to find the true owner of an account if it was really important to him/her. Time will tell if any puppies were injured by this action.