Data Tells All
Yesterday I wrote about optimizing donor data, versus privacy sensitivities.
Then last night I saw an article on this study, which is a great example of just how far personal data analysis can go in terms of predictive capability.
As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, these researchers were able to make some fascinating — and accurate — predictions of personal attributes by analyzing online behavior.
As the authors describe: “This study demonstrates the degree to which relatively basic digital records of human behavior can be used to automatically and accurately estimate a range of personal attributes that people would typically assume to be private.
With data from 58,000 volunteers on Facebook Likes, demographic profiles and psychometric tests, they created a model that uses the Likes preferences to predict other attributes.
For example, the model can very accurately discriminate between Democrats vs Republicans, heterosexual vs homosexual men, Caucasian vs African-American race, Christian vs Muslim, as well as predict traits like ‘Openness’ and substance use.
So, let me ask … given that last one, how well do you want to be known and profiled, based upon your digital behavior?
Tom
One response to “Data Tells All”
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