

Facebook app analyzes posts to find out which friend gave you the flu  - Aerocles
http://adage.com/article/creativity-pick-of-the-day/gave-flu-remedies-app/239015/

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codex
Imagine if the CDC had access to all of your email, Facebook posts, credit
card transactions, and location data from your phone and photos. It could do a
reasonable job of finding the infection vectors for large populations (an
unsanitary restaurant or school cafeteria, for example, or a friend who never
washes their hands, or an infected spinach batch from country X, or a MRSA
outbreak from hospital A, wing B). This information could be used to warn
people to be extra careful in specific situations. Sadly, this is unlikely to
happen in the near future.

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danso
To save people the clicks it takes to get there, this is what the app has
access to:

* Your basic info

* Your location

* Your status updates

* Friends' profile info: hometowns, locations and relationship details

* Status updates shared with you

Seeing how this is a 300-word blog post from AdvertisingAge that reads like a
300-word summary of a Friday press release, I'm guessing is that there's no
real science or ingenuity behind this, other than perusing your timeline
history and looking for:

a) the last few friends you were tagged with at an event

b) the last few friends you were tagged with in a photo

c) in the absence of a) and b), text-mining your friends' status updates to
see if any of them said "I'm sick/have the flu"

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mtgx
If they can do that, it should also be pretty easy to identify your political
affiliation. And speaking of which:

<http://persecuting.us>

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deadbea7
I'm sure the "Help, I have an STD," version of the app is not far behind.

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artursapek
God, this is so stupid.

