Project Gaydar

Students from MIT through the use of a computer program are able to predict if a person is gay or straight solely based on the gender and sexuality of a person's friends on Facebook.  The underlying principle is that similar people like to be around each other, so therefore, gay individuals will have a higher proportion of friends than those individuals who are straight.  The students have named their research under the code name of Project Gaydar.

What I find to be more surprising than the predictive power the study is that fact we as Internet users do not have as much control as we think we do.  This kind of data mining is remarkable as it is scary.  Project Gaydar is just another friendly reminder to be careful of what kind of information you are putting on the Internet while realizing that there is only so much you can do unless you stay offline.