But data mining is, of course, a potential privacy nightmare. There are algorithms that can tell if you're gay from your facebook page, and reassemble your address and social security number from aggregating apparently innocuous web content.
Really? Where can I find said algorithms? Knowing how they work would obviously be a useful way of thwarting them.
Apparently, it looks at the self-reported gender and sexual orientation of your Facebook friends, and uses that information to guess your own sexual orientation. Here's how I would do that:
Gather three variables: your gender, the male/female ratio of your friends, and the ratio of gay-or-bisexual to straight people among those of your friends who state their own sexual orientation. If I wanted to be extra-fancy, I might also include a sparse array of events and clubs that the person was signed up for.
Apply some standard machine learning tools to this,
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