Some Advice to the DL's... Facebook Accidentally Outing Gay Users Through Ads.
10/22/2010 | Posted by Da Seekah | Edit Post
According to Daily Mail, Facebook might be inadvertently outing its gay users to advertisers.
Researchers have discovered that different targeted advertising is being sent to users’ accounts if they have described themselves as gay or straight.
The discovery could mean that people who wish to keep their sexuality private may be sharing it with advertisers without their knowledge.
The loophole is yet another example of a Facebook privacy breach after it emerged that millions of pieces of personal information were being shared without users’ consent after using popular apps.
A team from Microsoft and Germany's Max Planck Institute created six fake profiles: two straight men, two straight women, a gay man and a lesbian. They wanted to see if Facebook targeted ads based on sexuality, and so the profiles were left otherwise completely the same.
The team then monitored what ads each virtual user was sent over a period of a week.
They found that the ads displayed on the gay man's profile differed substantially from those on the straight one. Many of these adverts were not obviously adverts for services that only gay men would require, and half of them did not mention the word ‘gay’ in the text.
The researchers say that this means people who click on the adverts from their Facebook profile will not know that they were targeted for that ad because of the sexual orientation and so by clicking through on the ad are effectively ‘outing’ themselves.
This means that the advertising firms now know if they are gay even if this aspect of their profile has been hidden from public view.
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