Moncton — Local man Daniel Dunphy, 26, said he’s seen quite a bit of news in his Facebook feed about a big data breach involving an analytics company called Cambridge Analytica that harvested data from about 50 million Facebook user profiles.
While the practice is obviously sketchy, Facebook has for years been letting you volunteer information such as check-ins and locations, interests and even passwords to third-party apps.
“I saw something about ‘unprecedented data harvesting,’ but then I also noticed this link to an app people were sharing that would show you what you look like as the opposite sex,” Dunphy told us. “I couldn’t resist. I was surprised how sexy I looked as a female! I shared it with all my friends and they did it too.”
The same app — “Kueez” — encourages users to find out plenty of other cool things about themselves, too.
“After I posted my girl-self, I then had to find out who owns the other half of my heart, which Bible verse tells my story, what Donald Trump has to say about me, what’s my reason to wake up in the morning, and who will be my guardian in the afterlife.
“I gotta say, most of the answers were shocking even to me!”
The hopelessly naïve Dunphy claims he does sometimes worry that malicious individuals or organizations could hack him or sell his sensitive information, but that doesn’t stop him from linking his Facebook account to as many outside apps as possible.
“I’m just playing Words With Friends and Angry Birds and stuff like that, and I use Google Fit when I go for a run — I know that tracks my location but that’s just so the GPS can calculate how many calories I’ve burned.
“I also really like how Facebook now asks me if I want to share recent photos I’ve taken with my phone — like the one I took of my bank statement after I got paid…I’m kinda into this girl, and I wanted her to see how well I’m doing financially. She liked the pic!”
While we were interviewing him, Dunphy was multitasking by letting another unknown app determine which of his friends has the prettiest eyes, and what type of dancer he is.
“Ooh, cool!” he cried. “This one’s called ‘Who Is Secretly Following You?’ — gotta do that one.”