Speaking of Digital Footprint…
I just read this intriguing article on Motherboard titled "The Data That Turned the World Upside Down," by Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus (link below). Although perhaps skewed politically, the message about our digital footprint is important. Please note that there is no intention of any political leaning--only the information about our digital trail.
According to the article, "Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method to analyze people in minute detail based on their Facebook activity."
"Anyone who has not spent the last five years living on another planet will be familiar with the term Big Data. Big Data means, in essence, that everything we do, both on and offline, leaves digital traces. Every purchase we make with our cards, every search we type into Google, every movement we make when our mobile phone is in our pocket, every “like” is stored. Especially every “like.” For a long time, it was not entirely clear what use this data could have—except, perhaps, that we might find ads for high blood pressure remedies just after we’ve Googled “reduce blood pressure.”
"But it was not just about “likes” or even Facebook: Kosinski and his team could now ascribe Big Five values based purely on how many profile pictures a person has on Facebook, or how many contacts they have (a good indicator of extraversion). But we also reveal something about ourselves even when we’re not online. For example, the motion sensor on our phone reveals how quickly we move and how far we travel (this correlates with emotional instability). Our smartphone, Kosinski concluded, is a vast psychological questionnaire that we are constantly filling out, both consciously and unconsciously."
Read the entire article here.
