Paragraph: (News/CNN/cnn-3b5f210ba2e9e27453f33ba89af3c52a6bc0bf40.txt)
Sent 1: (Financial Times) -- The increasing amount of personal information that can been gleaned by computer programs that track how people use Facebook has been revealed by an extensive academic study.
Sent 2: Such programmes can discern undisclosed private information such as Facebook users' sexuality, drug-use habits and even whether their parents separated when they were young, according to the study by Cambridge university academics.
Sent 3: In one of the biggest studies of its kind, scientists from the university's psychometrics team and a Microsoft-funded research centre analysed data from 58,000 Facebook users to predict traits and other information that were not provided in their profiles.
Sent 4: The algorithms were 88 per cent accurate in predicting male sexual orientation, 95 per cent for race and 80 per cent for religion and political leanings.
Sent 5: Personality types and emotional stability were also predicted with accuracy ranging from 62-75 per cent.
Sent 6: Facebook declined to comment.
Sent 7: The study highlights growing concerns about social networks and how data trails can be mined for sensitive information, even when people attempt to keep information about themselves private.
Sent 8: Less than 5 per cent of users predicted to be gay, for example, were connected with explicitly gay groups.
Sent 9: Michal Kosinksi, one of the report's authors, told the Financial Times that the university's techniques could easily be replicated by companies to infer personal attributes a person did not wish to share, such as sexual orientation or political views: "We used very simple and generic methods.
Sent 10: Marketing companies and internet companies could spend much more time and resources, and hence get much higher accuracy than we did."
Sent 11: Last week , the EU agreed to water down proposals for a radical overhaul of data privacy regulation.
Sent 12: The move reflects governments' reluctance to impede internet businesses that might spur economic growth, and follows fierce lobbying from technology companies including Facebook and Google.
Sent 13: Personal data has become big business.
Sent 14: Wonga, the UK online lender, makes credit judgments within seconds based on thousands of pieces of information, including an applicant's Facebook profile.
Sent 15: Tesco, the supermarket chain, this month started to use its customers' shopping histories to sell targeted online advertising.
Sent 16: The report also revealed some unexpected correlations -- such as people who liked 'curly fries' having higher IQs, while those who like Facebook's "Sliding on Floors With Your Socks On" page were unlikely to use drugs.