CARNAL NATION

When you log into Facebook, do the advertisements that appear on your wall seem a little too... well... targeted? It should come as no surprise that Internet advertisers use the information that you post on your profile in order to sell you things. On Facebook, advertisers may select any number of criteria in order to target their ads to specific populations: geographic location, age, gender, relationship status, etc. Advertisers can also enter keywords that Facebook software will match appropriately with any number of the more than 250 million profiles on the site. Until a few weeks ago, advertisers could also target ads based on sexual orientation. However, according the French LGBT news site Yagg, Facebook has quietly but proactively removed sexual orientation from its list of ad-targeting criteria in all 27 member nations of the European Union.

The move by Facebook comes amid a growing debate in Europe over the rights of advertisers to collect personal information and an individual's right to privacy. Two weeks ago, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the French agency in charge of data privacy, published a warning to all Internet users, alerting them to the use of personal information posted on websites and in mail clients for targeted advertisements. CNIL estimates that as many as 98 percent of Internet users are unaware that their personal information is being used by advertisers. The move by Facebook came as a surprise to Gwendal Le Grand, the technology director for CNIL. Le Grand believes that Facebook may have caved to pressure by the G29 Group, which is the European umbrella commission for all the individual data protection agencies in Europe. Named for a 1995 European directive on data privacy, G29 is responsible for enforcing the law with regard to the use of such sensitive data as political and philosophical opinions and affiliations, religion, and sexual orientation.

While CNIL and other agencies are still investigating the ways that Facebook software mines profiles for keywords and other advertising criteria, sexual orientation has officially been removed from the list. However, ads may still be targeted to gays and lesbians if, as Le Grand points out, users consent to the use of this information as specified by European law. Even without consent, users may still find some eerily relevant ads. "The danger can come precisely from keywords that skirt the law, " notes Le Grand.