In the paper from Microsoft in India and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, researchers were able to find out the stated sexual preference of users. The researchers created six different accounts with a one female account and one male account stating that they prefer partners of the same gender. Adverts were monitored on all six of those profiles. It was found that specific ads were shown on the same sex preference profiles. This is nothing new, but the researchers determined that if users whose profiles identified themselves as gay clicked on gay online adverts then these users are identifying themselves as gay to those advertisers. The researchers did not seek to find out if researchers actually used this technique, but they noted that individual names were note stored in cookies, but advertisers could get additional, personal information if they asked the person to fill out a web form or send an email to the advertiser. Facebook commented on this research and said that it prohibits advertisers from using personal information obtained from running. But what is stopping them from doing so?
In a second paper, a researcher from Stanford University found that she was able to find out the age and sexual orientation as well from tailoring adverts. In her paper, Aleksandra Korolova, collected information from public sources (like public records or the phone listings) and tailored adverts to fit this information and the additional information of interest in the same sex. If the advert was delivered up to a certain profile, Ms. Korolova would know that they were gay just based on the when the advert was delivered. She notified Facebook who changed their advert targeting guidelines. Facebook now bans any advertisement that is too specific so that it shows to only 20 people or less.
What both of these papers represent is that privacy is not as clear cut as we may think. As a result of both of these papers, Facebook and even MySpace acknowledged that personal information was ‘accidently leaked’ to advertisers from profiles and friends of friends’ profiles. If this is the case, then there are advertisers out there who may have our information without our direct consent or indirect consent of privacy settings on social websites like Facebook. Clearly, the complexity of online privacy is growing at a constant rate and we all need to assume that the information we put online isn’t necessarily private. If you have any doubt, check out how a new online tracking company called RapLeaf is dealing with personal information.
By Dominique Lazanski
Source: BBW
