FB users beware! Your secrets are not really secrets...

While Facebook has been accused in the past of prying on people's private lives and using Instagram's and its own privacy policies to suit its own needs, a Guardian report based on a recent study suggests that users themselves are 'unwittingly revealing their secrets including their sexual orientation, drug use and political beliefs - using only public "like" updates'.

Clearly your 'likes' could become the basis of the next story of the day. While this might actually be the intent of several users, what they do not realise is that the inferences drawn from all that data could be damning.

The report quoted one of the academics, Michal Kosinski behind the Microsoft Research study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal as saying that "he believed Facebook users would be "spooked" by the findings and called for regulatory intervention by politicians".

"The important point is that, on one hand, it is good that people's behavior is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed," said Kosinski.

The basis of these findings was that researchers were able to easily and accurately cull out a Facebook user's race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality or political views using only a record of the subjects and items they had "liked" on Facebook - even if users had chosen not to reveal that information.

The repercussions can be understood as such personal data if readily available and behaviors inferred from, can be revealed easily on the public domain. While the findings are based on Facebook users from the US, without doubt it could be applicable to other users too. In India, we have in the recent past seen instances such as the Maharashtra girls-Facebook one, where while one paid the price for putting up a view the other paid for 'liking' it.
Many people are of the view that users too need to be wary of throwing up all their details in public as a proactive measure, since possibility of misuse of the details cannot be ruled out. According to the report, Facebook declined to comment on the matter.
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