Two recent academic papers focusing on targeted advertising found that ads can expose "sensitive profile information, like a person's sexual orientation or religion, even if the person is sharing that information only with a small circle of friends," The New York Times reports. Researchers in India and Germany, who focused on ads targeted to Facebook users, noted that by clicking on ads, users could reveal such personal information along with a unique identifier. In a separate study, a U.S. researcher said she was able to determine Facebook users' ages and sexual orientation by tailoring ads to their profiles. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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