Slight Paranoia accounts that Facebook have be on the wrong side of the user privacy issue – again. A paper by a Microsoft investigator and two fellows from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems entitled “Challenges in Measuring Online Marketing Systems” involves troubling findings about Facebook. What the research indicates is that there may be yet an additional loophole, this time one where Facebook is giving up gay customers to marketing parties. Source of article – Report suggests Facebook is outing gay users to sponsors by Personal Money Store.
Customers on Facebook who record their sexual choice as gay will get advertised to differently
Facebook outing gay users is not an exercise in mind reading, content scrubbing or candid photo analysis. Facebook users are allowed to place on their Facebook which sexual preference they have. Zuckerberg begun Facebook for this reason. Facebook targets ads to customers based on the demographic data presented by the user, which is why it wouldn’t be surprising if ads were targeted depending on sexual preference.
Despite the fact that these lines are intended to be protected with the personal privacy settings Facebook has, a recent research paper showed that when using a bunch of control profiles on Facebook, the fictional gay male character received really different ads than the rest. The fake lesbian didn’t have this problem though. The women all received about the same ads. Women don’t care as much about the ads that they see on the internet and can have both lesbian and straight ads on their profile. Gawker also states that men do care because a straight man would not like seeing ads that target homosexual men on their profile which is why there is the change.
Flash your ID and choice info on the ad
Next comes the ongoing battle consumer protection groups have with Facebook. Advertisers get more information when you click on their ad. This consists of your email address, browsing data and IP address. In the case of gay users, Facebook could indeed out gay users by revealing that info when an advertisement is clicked. Gawker explains that a user who hides their sexual preference with privacy settings on Facebook may nevertheless start to see more “gay-themed” advertising after going to the gay men ad.
Articles cited
Saikat
saikat.guha.cc/pub/imc10-ads.pdf
Gawker
gawker.com/5669316/is-facebook-outing-gay-users-to-advertisers
Paranoia
paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/10/more-private-data-leakage-at-facebook.html
No comments:
Post a Comment