CARNAL NATION

Some enterprising undergraduates at MIT have discovered that by using some complex algorithms, they can calculate, based on who your friends are on social networking sites, whether or not you're gay. The study by Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree is called 'Project Gaydar.' "Well, duh!" might be your response. Facebook, which was the source of the MIT data, has a specific profile category for sexual orientation although it's not a required field. But those who deliberately choose not to disclose their sexuality may be doing so inadvertently when they "friend" their friends.

The software program behind Project Gaydar compiled the gender and sexuality of a given subject's friends. Using statistical analysis, the students could then make a prediction based on the compiled data of whether or not the subject is gay. While they could not definitively verify their results, the program appeared quite accurate for men. “When they first did it, it was absolutely striking—we said, ‘Oh my God—you can actually put some computation behind that,’” said their computer science professor Hal Abelson. So you think you're in control of your personal information, but you're not. Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, points out, “Certainly if most or many of your friends are of a particular religious or political or sexual category, others may conclude you are part of the same category—even if you haven’t said so yourself.”

For the record, Facebook does not currently own or have access to Project Gaydar. The results of Project Gaydar are not yet public. The study was conducted in 2007, and the students, who have graduated, are trying to publish their findings in a journal. However, Facebook does know about it. Spokesman Simon Axten wrote in an email to Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Y. Johnson, "“In general, it’s not too surprising that someone might make inferences about someone else without knowing that person based on who the person’s friends are. This isn’t specific to Facebook and is entirely possible in the real world as well." True enough, but there has been growing concern about the personal information that Facebook has access to and what they do or might do with it. Targeted advertising produces a lot of revenue for this multi-billion-dollar Internet presence.

Steps are being taken either to limit the unfettered use of personal information or to alert users to that potential. For instance, advertisers on Facebook will no longer be able to target European users based on their sexual orientation. Now the ACLU of Northern California has created a Facebook quiz that's meant to show users how the seemingly inocuous data from Facebook quizzes (e.g., "What Simpsons Character Are You?") can reveal a wide range of personal information like religion, political affiliation, or even sexual orientation. The text preceding the ACLU quiz states: "Once details about your personal life are collected by a quiz developer, who knows where they could end up or how they could be used. Shared? Sold? Turned over to the government?" After answering a few short questions, the quiz will pop-up a window detailing all the data, including Wall Posts and photos, that are available to Facebook and its advertisers and business associates. The ACLU would like to see Facebook change the default privacy settings so that the data generated by third-party applications and quizzes cannot be accessed without a user specifically opting in. You can find the quiz here.