Slight Paranoia accounts that Facebook have be on the wrong side of the user privacy issue – again. A paper by a Microsoft researcher and two fellows from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems entitled “Challenges in Measuring Online Advertising Systems” consists of troubling findings about Facebook. What the research implies is that there may be yet one more loophole, this time one where Facebook is giving up homosexual users to marketing parties. Source for this article – Report suggests Facebook is outing gay users to sponsors by Personal Money Store.
Facebook allows gay customers with a shown sexual preference get marketed to
Facebook outing gay users isn’t an exercise in mind reading, content scrubbing or candid photo analysis. Whether a Facebook user is interested in men or women is something they can post. This is a fact of Facebook. Zuckerberg begun Facebook for this reason. Considering that Facebook targets ads to users based upon demographic data, it would be no great stretch to also target users based upon upon sexual preference.
Even though these lines are intended to be protected with the personal privacy settings Facebook has, a recent research paper showed that when using a lot of control profiles on Facebook, the fictional gay male character received really different ads than the rest. It had been interesting to note the women didn’t receive really different ads from one one more, even when one had been a fake lesbian. The study authors explain the difference between homosexual and straight male ad targeting by pointing out that a homosexual bar wouldn’t want to place its ads on the profiles of straight men, whereas some straight women may be interested in such an advertisement, writes Gawker.
The ad you click on will look at your ID and preference information
It seems the battle that protection groups have with Facebook is being seen. Advertisers get more info whenever you click their ad. This includes your email address, browsing data and IP address. A user might be shown as homosexual when clicking on the ad. This is how Facebook could out them. An advertisement that is targeted toward gay men will go on someone’s profile, even if the user has selected to keep their sexual preference as private. This means that more “gay-themed” marketing will start to appear after clicking on one ad, claims Gawker.
Citations
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
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