Facebook 大量蒐集 GPS 定位資訊後用機械學習「猜測」你可能認識的人

Bruce Schneier 這邊看到「Facebook Using Physical Location to Suggest Friends」這則文章,引用自「Facebook is using your phone’s location to suggest new friends—which could be a privacy disaster」這篇報導,報導開頭寫著更新的資訊:

Update (June 28): After twice confirming it used location to suggest new friends, Facebook now says it doesn’t currently use “location data, such as device location and location information you add to your profile, to suggest people you may know.” The company says it ran a brief test using location last year. New story here.

Facebook 第二次確認後發現是標準的「啊!靠腰!是 PR 災難」的處理方式。在第一次跟 Facebook 確認時,Facebook 發言人的正式回覆說明了手機的位置是計算的條件之一:

“People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported and many other factors.”

One of those factors is smartphone location. A Facebook spokesperson said though that shared location alone would not result in a friend suggestion, saying that the two parents must have had something else in common, such as overlapping networks.

“Location information by itself doesn’t indicate that two people might be friends,” said the Facebook spokesperson. “That’s why location is only one of the factors we use to suggest people you may know.”

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