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clock-iconPUBLISHEDNovember 11, 2016

This Web Tool Uses Your Social Media Activity To Predict Your Past, Present, And Future

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Tom Hale

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture.

Senior Journalist

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture.View full profile

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture.

View full profile
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Your digital fingerprints are everywhere, and they reveal a lot about you.

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Every day, there’s an estimated 2.5 billion gigabytes of personal data released through the ever more connected social media and “internet of things.” All of this can make its way into the hands of corporations, governments, and even criminals.

The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK, has collaborated with game developer Ubisoft to create “Predictive World”, an interactive application to give you an insight into how your social media presence can be used to generate predictions of your behavior and lifestyle. The project has gone live for the release of the upcoming open world action-adventure game, Watch Dogs 2.

Simply connect your Facebook account to the application and it will use algorithms to sift through your public information and online activity to make up to 60 predictions about you, including everything from your age and gender, to your taste in music, your marijuana consumption, and your risk of being a victim of homicide.

In case you think it’s a tad ironic you’re handing even more of your data over to yet another website, the application says your personal data won’t be stored. But if you’re still a bit paranoid, you can just enter the information manually.

Give it a whirl right here. (note, the website seems to be experiencing some problems, so if you can't get in, try again later)


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