Well, apparently your best friend didn’t betray you at all when your darkest secrets were revealed among your classmates or family. Blame it on Facebook ‘Likes’ instead, that showed up in your friend’s Facebook timeline whenever you ‘like’ a link or so.
According to our source, a study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where researchers analyze the likes of more than 58,000 American Facebook users to make guesses about their personalities and behaviour.
The like button was launched in 2009 and since then, the small thumbs-up symbol has become one of the greatest feature for Facebook. Cambridge University researcher David Stillwell said the results may came as a surprise as the ‘likes’ may be saying more about you than you realize. The study found that the Facebook likes were mapped to every kind of info including relationship status, sexual orientation, IQ, alcohol use, and other personal info.
Stillwell and the colleagues collected the data through the applications frequently used by millions of Facebook users who volunteered to use the apps including personality tests.
The researchers also said that Facebook likes help to identify drug users and children as well but it was far trickier than it was. The sucess rate was lower and it was just slightly better than random guesses.
Jennifer Golbeck, a University of Maryland computer scientist who wasn’t involved in the study has done similar work as well. She said, “Even if you think you’re keeping your information private, we can learn a lot about you.” Facebook’s Frederic Wolens said in a written statement that Facebook users could change the privacy settings on their likes to put them beyond the reach of researchers, advertisers or nearly anyone else.
So, before you start accusing your best friends for spreading your secrets, you might as well check if you’ve any pages linked to your secrets! As advised by Stillwell, ‘look before you like’.
Source: Huffingtonpost
