70,000 OkCupid Users Just Had Their Data Published

Emm

Stealth Mod
OkCupid is an attractive site to gather data from.
A student and a co-researcher have publicly released a dataset on nearly 70,000 users of the dating site OkCupid, including their sexual turn-ons, orientation, usernames and more. And critics say it may be possible to work out users' real identities from the published data.
All thanks to clueless students and university ethics policies that haven't caught up with modern technology. You'd think "Violates terms of service" would be an automatic "No" when asking for research approval, but if not then "illegal here (being Denmark), carries a 4 month jail term" should be.
 
I'm glad I'm not using OKC anymore ... :eek:
 
Ugh. That study was highly unethical. I am not surprised they didn't attempt to publish it in a peer reviewed journal: it would have been torn apart like a steak tossed into a wolverine den. I work in the research field, though not on human studies. Every tech, grad student and researcher I've ever worked with has been extremely aware of the necessities of maintaining high ethical standards. We're all but rabidly dedicated to ensuring our actions are ethically defensible. We are not only accountable to ourselves and our subjects (how could you sleep at night after treating people like that??), but also to our funders, ethics committees, SOP approval boards, the labs we preform our work and analysis in, as well as the university and other groups we may be employed by... but also by public opinion. Things like this make it so much harder to earn trust for legitimate scientific inquiry. I can guarantee the authors of this study will never be hired in my lab! They'd be tarred and feathered and run out of town.

Disgusting.
 
After reading the link icesong posted, it looks like they're only "researchers" in the very limited field of "brown religious people coming here are bad, lets show how they're dumber than us good white locals by... um... data manipulation!"

I'm reminded of the underpant gnomes:

Step 1: Collect Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!
 
I've never heard of underpants gnomes!

But I know that my OKC profile, which was up when they took the info, doesn't give me away. I'm very particular about what kind of stuff I post online and for a long time my pics didn't show my face clearly. I assume they only harvested text and not pictures?
 
The underpants gnomes are hilarious. They're from an episode of South Park.
 
After reading the link icesong posted, it looks like they're only "researchers" in the very limited field of "brown religious people coming here are bad, lets show how they're dumber than us good white locals by... um... data manipulation!"

I saw that. This makes me so angry I can't even. Can't. EVEN. So I will do the responsible adult thing and not post an accurate description of my opinion on their thought processes.


Step 1: Collect Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!

Yes! This!
 
I was able to navigate in the Open Science Framework page to where the files should be, and got a "nope" message every time that said the file was suspended and unavailable for legal reasons.

So there we have it.

Here's an example of the nope:

https://osf.io/p9ixw/

If anyone wants to see.

Wonder though how many times it was downloaded before they got it taken down, and if it has been or will be shared elsewhere at all in the future by others who have it.

Always remember...if it's "out there," it's "out there." If you provided information to a site online, it isn't private.

It's like people thinking fetlife is a safe place to post explicit pics of themselves, when they would not want those shared publicly. Um...you totally just shared it publicly when you put it on fet. You're counting on the goodness of thousands of deviants to not screenshot your pics and just do anything they want with them.

Also why I'm so out about my lifestyle...both poly, AND kink. What isn't a secret can't be used against me like one. People who don't care:

My parents and siblings.
My employer and coworkers.
My friends.

People who totally judge me:

My ex.

I'm thankful. I know that not everyone has the luxury of being out about their sexuality, if it's not just normal-as-assumed.

Anyhoo. Careful what you put out there, folks...
 
I see no real harm in using the data to study trends, but can think of no scientific reason to include user names. Personally, I would not put anything on the internet with an expectation of privacy.
 
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