INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook holds a huge amount of your personal data - perhaps even enough to tell when you'll get married, have children and die.To find out
how much the site can extrapolate about its users' lives, the New York Times plunged into the hundreds of patent applications Facebook has
filed since it went public in 2012.One of its most alarming - and fascinating - discoveries was the patent Predicting Life Changes of
Members of a Social Networking System, which would use your recent online activity to forecast major personal events.According to the
patent, "A life change event, for example, may be a change in marital status, a birthday, a new job, a birth of a child, a graduation, or a
death of a person associated with the user, just to name a few."The patent refers to communication data, including wall posts, instant
messages and text messages, which could be scanned for key words indicating that something big is about to happen in your life.The circle of
adsThis information could then be used to target advertising more effectively
For example, if the algorithm determined that you were about to become a parent, it could shower you with ads for nurseries and
helpful to advertisers if that happens after the event has taken place
There's no point trying to sell a wedding dress to a woman who's already on her honeymoon.Although the potential might be there, a patent
