How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation

Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by ebloch on Monday January 04, 2010 @01:16AM (#1029883)

I'm not sure "trick" is a fair assessment, why do you think it's a trick? We don't scrape Facebook for data, but use a variety of data providers for most of our social information.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by jfarmer on Monday January 04, 2010 @01:34AM (#1029904)

Sorry. Your original response made it sound like that's what you did do.

I knew, e.g., Facebook lets you search by email address to find a friend if you know their email. Since the data on Flowtown more-or-less matched that data I had assumed that was the source of the data.

You'd do the same for the other social networks, plus perhaps get data from Rapleaf and other social profile companies.

If you're saying that's not the case, I can't argue with that and apologize for implying otherwise.

As to whether it's a trick or not, what difference does it make? You can call it a tactic if you'd like.

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Re:How to convert email addresses into name, age, ethnicity,... by ebloch on Monday January 04, 2010 @02:49AM (#1029980)

Ah, ok, totally my bad. I had the wrong context around "trick" I thought you were referring to our business and not a potential method we used to uncover social data.

On an totally unrelated note Cassie says "Hi" - I was at her place for one of her roommates bday's and I was on his computer responding to this thread and she's like OMG jfarmer is that who you're talking with... such a small world.

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