Posted 07/30/08 at 02:51:45 PM | by Paul Lilly
Believe it or not, your browser might know more about you than even your spouse. Whether you use Firefox, Internet Explorer, or any of the several alternative browsers, a peek in your browsing history reveals what games you're playing, where you shop, what you shop for, where you booked your upcoming vacation, and it even knows what turns you on. But up until now, your browser had no way of knowing whether you're a male for female. Not anymore.
Mike Nolet, CTO and co-founder of AppNexus, has devised a nifty little algorthm that analyzes your browser's history and then predicts your gender probability. The code comes from a modified version of Paul Cook's Social History javascript, and with a little bit of tweaking, Nolet has made it capable of predicting whether you're a male or female. But just how accurate is it? After quickly analyzing the sites I had recently visited (it works much faster on Firefox than IE), the likelihood of my being male came back 100 percent. Save for this one Halloween party in college, that's pretty damn accurate. And eerie. Are there really no women who dig shopping at Newegg, throwing down cards at Pokerstars, and drooling over Kawasaki's 2008 sport bike lineup?
Try it out for yourself and post your results below.
Image Credit: Flickr inju
Comments
Print
Email
© 2008 Future US, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/one4yu2c
[2] http://www.mikeonads.com/about/
[3] http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/
[4] http://azarask.in/blog/post/socialhistoryjs/
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/seven_must_have_bookmarks_you_dont_already_own_and_a_pair_old_favorites
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/tinyurl_finally_adds_vanity_urls
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/172_million_websites_inhabit_internet_according_netcrafts_survey