Scientists argue that anonymity on the Internet is not guaranteed: all the properties of your personality are visible at a glance after the advent of digital trace analysis technologies.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING TODAY NIGHT …
Every time you go to the Internet, you involuntarily reveal to the world all your innermost thoughts and feelings. With such frankness, deeply religious people confess to a priest. Only in our case no one is obliged to keep the secret of "confession" of Internet users. And all your under-the-hood can easily become the subject of public discussion.
Do you think that for this you need to establish surveillance and wiretap your phone? Nothing like this! It's enough just to analyze your behavior on the social network. Psychologists at the University of Cambridge studied how 58 thousand Facebook users put "likes" (the "like" icon). As a result, scientists have learned to establish a person's nationality with an accuracy of 95 percent and in 82 cases out of 100 could distinguish a Christian user from a Muslim. Moreover, they almost unmistakably determine your, sorry, sexual orientation. Even if you are carefully encrypted! The researchers admitted that only 5 percent of gay users could be directly calculated when they clicked unambiguous links, such as "gay marriage."However, there is an 88 percent chance that computer scientists can tell if you like boys or girls just by looking at which movies, hits, clothing brands, and food you prefer.
Jennifer Golbeck, a computer analyst of social networks at the University of Maryland, claims that after processing the digital traces that you leave in large quantities after each visit to the Internet, all the properties of your personality manifest themselves at a glance. Does it seem too complicated for you?
YOUR DAUGHTER IS PREGNANT
Promotional video:
Big science comes to the common man, sometimes in the most extravagant form. It is worth mentioning a classic case when the computer processing technology Big Date (Big Data) came to the house of one of the Americans in the form of … discount coupons for clothes and accessories for newborns. The father of the family was outraged that maternity products were being offered to his 15-year-old daughter. Having collected a bunch of personal coupons, he went to the manager of the Target store (this is one of the largest retail chains in the United States) and made a scandal.
- You corrupt minors! How dare you offer maternity products to my daughter while she is still in school! - shouted the father in a fit of noble anger.
A few days later, the angry man received a call from a retail chain manager to apologize. But it turned out that the incident was over: the high school student admitted to her parents that she was really expecting a child.
“But how did you know about it two weeks before she told us about it? - the upset father wondered.
It turned out that the schoolgirl's carefully concealed pregnancy was calculated by a computer predictive pregnancy system created by Target analyst Andrew Paul. He is one of 50 analysts, which costs $ 4 million annually to maintain. The company's managers set Paul a task: to draw up a program that would determine online that a woman had become pregnant. It was important for “Target” to be the first to offer a lady the goods that she would order for herself and her baby. According to Jennifer Golbeck, the behavioral patterns of hundreds of thousands of consumers were analyzed to determine the "pregnancy index". Key touches on their own at first glance did not say anything. For example, a girl bought more vitamins than usual. Or scored in a search engine "the most effective way to quit smoking." Or I ordered a lotion with coconut oil (it is used for stretch marks during pregnancy) … But comparing these and other events, the computer program with an accuracy of 87 percent delivers a verdict: a woman is expecting a baby!
WE ARE ALL UNDER THE CAP
In reality, the technology of analyzing massive amounts of data is not just about increasing diaper sales. They are a very effective tool for much more serious things.
For example, the Russian company SocialDataHub, which analyzes big data, in a matter of hours was able to identify the suicide bomber who blew up a train in the St. Petersburg subway in April. Having at their disposal a photo of the severed head of the alleged criminal, computer scientists using a face recognition program found six accounts of Akbarzhon Jalilov on social networks in a matter of hours. And through his friends, they found a connection with another terrorist who shot the FSB reception room in Khabarovsk …
These technologies are increasingly being used to track the political activity of citizens. The same SocialDataHub, three days before the opposition protest rallies, which took place recently in Moscow, posted a study “How many people will come to the rally on June 12 and who they are”.
To begin with, analysts examined photographs from an earlier protest rally on March 26 (all photos were in the public domain) and, using a face recognition algorithm, found accounts of participants in the March events on social networks. There were 37 thousand of them, and there were not many schoolchildren among them - 3-4 percent. The programmers filtered information about the social status of these people, analyzed how often they liked and commented on opposition posts in social networks, calculated how many people announced their intention to participate in the rally and how many actually came … As a result, by analogy with the "pregnancy index", they made model of people's behavior, on the basis of which the number of protesters was predicted on June 12. The accuracy of the numbers is a controversial issue, but the profiles of these people appeared at a glance, which probably warms the souls of competent people. The core of Protestants is office workers - they make up 30 percent, students - 18, schoolchildren - 9 …
There is no place left in the network where a person can be unnoticed. The best illustration of this topic is another SocialDataHub study. On adult sites, they collected photos of 27,856 women and 1,387 men offering love for money. Using facial recognition technology, we found the real accounts of these people on social networks. And we have compiled a rating of universities, whose graduates most often earn on the panel (the top three included Moscow State University, MGIMO and HSE).
“Forget about anonymity on the Internet, it doesn't exist,” says Artur Khachuyan, one of the leaders of SocialDataHub.
And, perhaps, he is right. We are all under the hood.
QUESTION - A RIB
How to hide from the all-seeing eye?
What to do - close your pages in social networks, leaving the right of access only for close friends? Maybe give up gadgets altogether and keep your nose on the Internet?
“I think there is no point in committing“digital suicide,”for people who, by duty, are not connected with state secrets and military secrets,” says Sergei Lozhkin, senior antivirus expert at Kaspersky Lab. - Why give up the achievements of technical progress? Communicate, post photos, live a full life, but we must understand that our behavior on the Internet should be more responsible. You cannot upload your whole life, your whole working day to social networks. You should not post private items and very personal photos. This information can be used by hackers or ill-wishers. You need to be aware of what you write on your page. A striking example is the crash of the plane of the Ministry of Defense, which before the new year was carrying the choir of Alexandrov and journalists to Syria. Certain people have rashly written a lot of disgusting things about this. An hour later, they changed their minds, this information was deleted, but it was too late. Because these statements spread across the networks in a few seconds, remained in various search engine caches. In the virtual space, you have to live according to the laws of the real world, where you are responsible for your every action.
EDITORIAL
The digital world has deprived us of the protective shell - everything we do can become public. On the one hand, it is bad that we are deprived of our personal space. On the other hand, it is possible that big data analysis technologies are able to do what the 10 Commandments could not do: correct the sinful nature of man. It used to be easier to sin: if you do it imperceptibly, then others may not recognize. And the Last Judgment - when will it be! And now every vice or rash step of yours can reveal itself. What is not a reason to become righteous?
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV