Fitbit Data Now Being Used In The Courtroom
Personal injury cases are prime targets for manipulation and conjecture. How do you show that someone who’s been in a car accident can’t do their job properly, and deserves thousands of dollars in compensation? Till now lawyers have relied on doctors to observe someone for half an hour or so and give their, sometimes-biased opinion. Soon, they might also tap the wealth of quantifiable data provided by fitness trackers. A law firm in Calgary is working on the first known personal injury case that will use activity data from a Fitbit to help show the effects of an accident on their client.
PrivacyGrade: Grading The Privacy Of Smartphone Apps
We’re a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. We have assigned privacy grades to Android apps based on some techniques we have developed to analyze to their privacy-related behaviors. Learn more here or browse our analyzed apps.
A World Without Privacy
Will Dave Eggers’s new novel “The Circle” end up being prophetic? The book is a warning about how we are well on our way to losing the last shred of privacy we have.
Terms of Service, Understanding Our Role in the World of Big Data
Big Data powers the modern world. With tools like FitBit tracking our every step and supercomputers like IBM’s Watson helping Memorial Sloan Kettering treat cancer patients, we literally live it. Between our social media profiles, browsing histories, discount programs, and new tools like Nest controlling our energy use, there’s no escape.
Understanding Our Role in the World of Big Data, a free graphic novel by Michael Keller & Josh Neufeld.
How Facebook Is Changing the Way Its Users Consume Journalism
Many of the people who read this article will do so because Greg Marra, 26, a Facebook engineer, calculated that it was the kind of thing they might enjoy.
Mr. Marra’s team designs the code that drives Facebook’s News Feed — the stream of updates, photographs, videos and stories that users see. He is also fast becoming one of the most influential people in the news business.
Facebook now has a fifth of the world — about 1.3 billion people — logging on at least monthly. It drives up to 20 percent of traffic to news sites, according to figures from the analytics company SimpleReach. On mobile devices, the fastest-growing source of readers, the percentage is even higher, SimpleReach says, and continues to increase.
Personalization – Northeastern University
Today, many major websites personalize the content that they show to users. Examples include: Google Search, which personalizes search results to try and surface more relevant content; Amazon and Netflix, which personalize product and movie recommendations; and Facebook, which personalizes each user’s news-feed to highlight engaging content. The proliferation of personalization on the Web is driven by the explosion of Big Data that is available about people’s online and offline behavior.
Although there are cases where personalization is beneficial to users, scientists and regulators have become increasingly concerned that personalization may also harm Web users. For example, sociologists and political scientists are concerned that online Filter Bubbles may create “echo chambers” that increase political polarization. Similarly, personalization on e-commerce sites can be used to implement price discrimination.
Given the enormous number of people who rely on the Web, it is imperative that we understand how personalization algorithms are being deployed, and the effect that they have on Web users. Below, you will find links to specific research projects that our group has undertaken to address these issues.
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