Facebook Seeks to Patent Software to Analyse Who Lives With You

Facebook Seeks to Patent Software to Analyse Who Lives With You

San Francisco: Despite facing flak for leakage of personal data of millions of its users in recent times, Facebook is seeking to patent a software that could help it build profile of an user’s household - the number of people in the household, the interests that they share, nature of their relationships or even the devices that they use. The software, which could be used to target ads, would analyse images posted to Facebook or Instagram, The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

An online system that predicts household features of a user — household size and demographic composition — provides improved and targeted content delivery to the user and the user’s household, according to the patent application.

To help determine whether people live in the same home, the software could look at how often people are tagged in pictures together and at the captions of the photos, it said.

“Without such knowledge of a user’s household features, most of content items that are sent to the user are poorly tailored to the user and are likely ignored,” said the patent application, which was filed last year and made public on Thursday. Facebook could also incorporate “past posts, status updates, friendships, messaging history, past tagging history” and web browsing history to put together a profile of a household or family, the report added. (IANS)

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