When we talk about the dangers of not taking care of our privacy on the Internet, it is strange that we automatically think of sophisticated computer programs designed to extract important data from our continuous interactions with the Internet: entering our card number in an online payment box, fill out a registration form on a specific website, or even search for keywords on Google.
However, it is increasingly common that the information that data analysts and IT specialists work with data mining They are not lines that we have typed in Internet spaces that we believed were private and protected, but the things we do on social networks open to many people. In other words, what puts our privacy at risk are the actions we take on the Internet so that information about us reaches more people and, at the same time, we have information about others.
The clearest example of this lack of voluntary privacy could be right under our noses, in the number of people we have added as friends on the most important social network: Facebook. It is increasingly common to have a massive number of people added, even if our profile is not created to promote our products or services.
An interesting study
At this point it is no longer possible to ask what percentage of these people is made up of friends, but simply, How many of these people that we have added on Facebook are we able to recognize? The answer, according to research promoted by a series of scientists from California State University and Yale University, is that friends and acquaintances may not reach even 75% of the people we have added on Facebook, at least with the sample used (a portion of the US population).
That is to say, the number of people we really know from the list of our contacts on Facebook could only represent a proportion of 3 out of every 4 individuals. The rest of the people? We have serious problems remembering your first or last name
Do you recognize this person?
The article reporting on the research, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, gives more clues about how this study was proposed.
To collect data, the team of researchers designed a computer program called What’s Her Face(book) in which each of the more than 4,000 participants who tested it had to enter the first name, last name or first and last name of people randomly chosen from their contact list on Facebook. The “file” on the person who was to be identified only contained five photographs: the profile image and four photos in which he or she appeared tagged.
If you entered only a first name or a surname, you could make a mistake in one of the letters so that the attempt could be counted as a success, while if you entered a first name and at least one surname, a margin of 3 letters of error was left. . Participants were encouraged to identify as many people as possible in 90 seconds, which was how long the game lasted, and they could play again as many times as they wanted. The average number of games played by each person was 4 times.
The result? On average, The participants were only able to identify 72.7% of their Facebook friends which were an average of 650. In other words, of the average of 650 people added on Facebook, the participants were only able to say the name of 472 of them, not even 3 out of every 4 people added on this social network.
Beyond this result obtained as an average, there are some differences between subgroups of individuals. Differences that, in any case, do not even remotely cover the distance that goes from the average of 72.7% to 100% correct answers that would theoretically be expected if the Facebook friends of the participants were also friends in real life. .
For example, men proved to be better at identifying other men while women also proved to be more skilled at recognizing people of the same sex.
Furthermore, women generally obtained better results than men, getting the name right 74.4% of the time, while men obtained an average of 71% correct.
On the other hand, as expected, those with fewer people in their contact list performed better: around 80% correct answers, which contrasts with the 64.7 correct answers in people with more people added.
A slight advantage
Theoretically, the results obtained by people who had already played before should be better than those of the rest as they had had the opportunity to have more time to identify the people who were not initially recognized. Besides, Every time you failed to identify a person, the name of that Facebook contact appeared on the screen which should give a significant advantage when it comes to getting a good score on the next turn.
However, the people who played the most times only managed to improve an average of 2% of their score, an increase that seems laughable considering the number of times they continue to fail even on the last attempt.
