A marketing campaign for the upcoming Ubisoft video game “Watch Dogs” aims to show users just how much of their personal info they put out on Facebook.
The campaign, called “Digital Shadow,” works by obtaining a user’s
permission to access their Facebook account. It then pulls information
from their profile to create a “dossier” of the user as if they were the
intended target of one of the assassins in the video game.
Digital Shadow shows users what photos they’ve tagged publicly, what
friends they interact with the most, and which ones they’ve been
Facebook stalking. And it goes even further: the program also shows
users what times of day they are most active, their potential salary
based on education and job title, and even possible passwords the user
could have.
We don’t typically install Facebook applications like this, but the
lure was too much for us to resist. And we wanted to check it out before
passing the information along. Out of necessity, the app does ask for a
good bit of personal information. One good thing is that they don’t
require you to let the app post as you, so you won’t be spamming your
friends unless you choose to do so.
All in all, it’s a pretty splashy marketing ploy, but it has
potential uses beyond just selling you a video game. It’s also a fun,
albeit creepy, way to find out just how vulnerable your Facebook profile
is to prying eyes. If you run the test on yourself and aren’t pleased
with the results, consider tightening your privacy settings or changing
the information that may be available to public users.
We chose to uninstall the app after our Digital Shadow was rendered.
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