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I know they took precautions on protecting user privacy, but there is something a little bit unnerving about analyzing personal messages without written consent

• Herring 17y ago
  You put your data on their server. Life is generally much clearer if you expect people to act according to their interests.
  • physcab 17y ago
    I don't mean to suggest that users don't. I'm just saying its a bit unnerving. As a data scientist, one needs to constantly ask themselves ethical questions concerning that data they are working on. Just because it exists, doesn't mean you should munge on it. I know its quite the temptation, because it's what I currently do! I prefer to create an outlet where users are willingly giving up that information to be analyzed. They can still act according to their interests, but at least they know what will become of their information.
    • kevinpet 17y ago
      That would turn out just like internet polls showing Ron Paul winning in a landslide and security blog polls showing most people memorize a unique 14 character alpha-numeric password for every site they visit. This is the right way to anonymize the data -- publish only aggregate data, rather than anything which can be analyzed individually. If you don't expect everything you do to be anlayzed, you need to stay off the internet. The answer to privacy issues is user education. Asking companies to behave nicely will lead to users being extremely vulnerable to bad actors.
• tlrobinson 17y ago
  Sure most people don't read these things, but you agree to them when you sign up... http://www.okcupid.com/privacy#obtained http://www.okcupid.com/privacy#obtained