MIT's Project Gaydar

As your data become public, the math determines who you are? The point here is not to hide one's identity, but to be aware that, if you put yourself entirely on line, your identity becomes less and less under your control.

Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction... Their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep... “That pulls the rug out from a whole policy and technology perspective that the point is to give you control over your information - because you don’t have control over your information.” The work has not been published in a scientific journal, but it provides a provocative warning note about privacy. More...