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Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

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Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#91

Post by colkassad »

reinhardt wrote: post #58
JonnieCache wrote: post #19

The important thing to take away from this: If they can make guesses this accurate about your photos, imagine they guesses they're making behind the scenes about your life, your personality and your innermost thoughts. If there was a page on fb where it showed all the inferences they had made about you, sexuality, income, religion, philosophical viewpoints, mental health, etc. then people would run screaming. Of cour…

As someone with just a fake-info FB account that interacts with it maybe once or twice a week, I am more concerned by the fact that not having an (active|real) account is also a signal that says (or may say at some point in the near future) a lot about me.

From the link - "Did you login with the facebook app on a smartphone while you were at the hospital? If so, they would have your GPS location at a certain time, when you later upload the photos from your camera, it would have a timestamp, and they could just look check where you had logged in from at that time."

If you are a home owner and this is true, you could possibly be identified -- say for instance posting from home 75% of the time and cross-referencing with certain demographic statistics collected from your browsing history and property records. Would that be legal?

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#92

Post by zombielifestyle »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

Years ago I worked with a guy who used to sell computer equipment to businesses. He told me that when he went to different divisions in each company, they all had org/structure charts somewhere around the office. And in every one of them, their section was in the middle and everybody else was serviced by them. No matter what you did, you were the center of the universe to you. Likewise, I've had experience building a…

i can't manage fb to share location information from friend accounts. if 2 accounts upload an (similar) image including one active check-in fb only suggests locations based on the check-ins of that active account. this is even true for public images.

until someone provides a POC that states the opposite it's just YOUR data that YOU freely give to fb. no magic behind, just FUD.

responded to top post for karmawhoring. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3377267

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#93

Post by gresrun »

johnyzee wrote: post #33
JonnieCache wrote: post #19

The important thing to take away from this: If they can make guesses this accurate about your photos, imagine they guesses they're making behind the scenes about your life, your personality and your innermost thoughts. If there was a page on fb where it showed all the inferences they had made about you, sexuality, income, religion, philosophical viewpoints, mental health, etc. then people would run screaming. Of cour…

That is true. Mere statistical analysis on the word count on articles you prefer to read will give a very accurate insight into your interests and mindset. Facebook has access to this data through the "Like" button trojans that exist on many websites. If anything, they haven't been very impressive in putting this data to work yet (or I would be seeing a hell of a lot better targeted ads than currently).

Statistical analysis can give you a lot more than just what I like to read. The power of statistics never ceases to amaze: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#95

Post by johnyzee »

gresrun wrote: post #93
johnyzee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true. Mere statistical analysis on the word count on articles you prefer to read will give a very accurate insight into your interests and mindset. Facebook has access to this data through the "Like" button trojans that exist on many websites. If anything, they haven't been very impressive in putting this data to work yet (or I would be seeing a hell of a lot better targeted ads than currently).

Statistical analysis can give you a lot more than just what I like to read. The power of statistics never ceases to amaze: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

Funny you should mention it. I am in the middle of Cryptonomicon - a thoroughly enjoyable read with a heavy focus on this area of study.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#96

Post by safetyscissors »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

Years ago I worked with a guy who used to sell computer equipment to businesses. He told me that when he went to different divisions in each company, they all had org/structure charts somewhere around the office. And in every one of them, their section was in the middle and everybody else was serviced by them. No matter what you did, you were the center of the universe to you. Likewise, I've had experience building a…

Its also not a good thing that we don't know who Facebook or Google is selling this or giving this information to. The advertising agencies, meh kinda. The organisations with acronyms, they are more worrisome. I also wonder, to what extent the amount of information they have about the average user.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#97

Post by tibbon »

iradik wrote: post #75
drats wrote: post #24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transfo... Facebook almost certainly has more photo information than TinEye or Flickr, and of indoor environments probably more than Google (which has reverse image search too). Across any given bar or hospital Facebook would have maybe 5-10 other people with albums tagged with the name/gps/check-in. They'd only need one other album though. SIFT more or less turns…

It's not that sophisticated. It's a picture of a baby being taken at a hospital. There's probably hundreds of photos of babies being taken with GPS from that hosptial. FB image recognition probably thinks all these babies are the same "person". Then a separate system comes along and takes photos that do not have location info and tries to match them up with ones that do. It finds a match with the "hospital baby" and…

One other even simpler possibility, Facebook is looking at where you checked in or made status updates from and comparing the timestamps?

"I just had a baby" - updated from hospital (Upload photo with timestamp near that status time) Match the two

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#98

Post by T-hawk »

jsaxton86 wrote: post #73
drats wrote: post #24

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-invariant_feature_transfo... Facebook almost certainly has more photo information than TinEye or Flickr, and of indoor environments probably more than Google (which has reverse image search too). Across any given bar or hospital Facebook would have maybe 5-10 other people with albums tagged with the name/gps/check-in. They'd only need one other album though. SIFT more or less turns…

If I were to take a picture of a baby at a hospital, wouldn't the majority of the features be of the baby, not the hospital? I suppose if there's at least one picture in the album that's of the actual hospital, that's probably all you would need to infer the rest of the set was taken at the same hospital.

There's plenty of ways to infer location information from a single picture focusing on a baby. The hospital could be identified from something as small as one piece of paper in the background with letterhead or another identifier. Or the face of a nurse in the background that was previously known to be at this hospital. Quite possibly the room layout or particular pieces of equipment in certain arrangements. Landmarks outside a window.

Pictures leak a ton of side channel information outside of their subject matter.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#99

Post by myared »

uptown wrote: post #55

Since Facebook knows your social connections, isn't it also possible they check the location of the people to whom you're connected, and use their location as a guide as to where your photos may have been taken? If a cousin checked Facebook on a phone near a hospital while you posted a hospital photo, they know there's a chance the cousin was visiting you and that's where your photo was taken. They use your social gr…

I think this is a highly likely scenario. The reddit user isn't taking into account that much of what Facebook knows about us comes from our connections.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#100

Post by infoleak »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

Years ago I worked with a guy who used to sell computer equipment to businesses. He told me that when he went to different divisions in each company, they all had org/structure charts somewhere around the office. And in every one of them, their section was in the middle and everybody else was serviced by them. No matter what you did, you were the center of the universe to you. Likewise, I've had experience building a…

Google seems to have no qualms about supplying information when asked by some local police station in Bangalore. (don't remember which one, ie, Vijaynagar policestation ). Came to know this from a colleague at the startup I'm working. I think we were asked for some customer information. When we replied that we will have to think about the legal aspect , the police guy retorted "When companies like Google give us what we want without any hassles,what is your problem?"
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