"Show Me All The Muslims who Like Bacon!" - another case to #DeleteFacebook
With all the recent outrage over gathering of user data by Cambridge Analytica, you'd have thought that Facebook would have tightened up their security a little by now. You'd hope, at least, that users would be more aware of what they're sharing on the website. A brief exploration of the Graph API this week shows otherwise.
All it takes is some URL tweaking, and you can still get some interesting user lists from Facebook, for whatever purposes you wish. Whilst this doesn't involve any data that has been marked as "private", it seems that users are unaware of how transparent they're being.
You want a list of "Married Men who like Female Sex Workers"? Just use this URL.
https://www.facebook.com/search/males/married/users/str/Female%20Sex%20Workers/pages-named/likers/intersect/
You have to be a bit careful; asking for a list of Muslims who like bacon will return some innocent users who like Kevin and Francis Bacon. But you want a list of Muslim users who like "Bacon Sandwiches"? We got ya!
The great bacon debate divides the USA and the UK.For research purposes alone, and with no nefarious plan in mind, I searched for Single Straight Male Models in the USA, aged between 30 and 40, who are interested in dating.
There's not that many of them, but I sent one a Friend Request anyway. I figure if he's brave enough to share that with the world, he won't mind sharing a bit of his time with me.