If you're going to be paranoid ...

... please be paranoid about the things you should be paranoid about.

Slate has a tech column and today's features questions about Facebook. This one jumped out at me:

Dear Farhad,

How does Facebook pick which ads to display? I'm gay, out, and proud, but my sexual orientation isn't listed on my Facebook page. However, Atlantis' gay-cruise ads still appear when I'm browsing. Has the site somehow figured out that I'm gay?

—Not Happy With Facebook Ads

Dear Not Happy,

Were you convinced by Farhad's answer? I wasn't. BTW, did you notice how often Farhad seems to answer troubling questions about Facebook by contacting officials at Facebook? You could do that yourself.

Let's face it, a Facebook advertiser figured out that you're gay and they have done it on the basis of very little information indeed. Strictly speaking, they figured out that you're probably gay, they have no way of knowing for certain. That is what the Facebook officials Farhad talked to meant when they told him this:

... you've most probably been swept up in an ad targeted to a very broad group. When companies advertise on Facebook, they're allowed to choose a range of demographic characteristics that determine which people see their ads.

Here is the thing though: How often do you think they get it wrong? You were upset to see the ad but imagine how straight guys, especially straight guys who are touchy about being thought gay (and there are still lots of guys in that category), would feel if the ad showed up for them? Think Facebook is going to risk angering all sorts of users that way? Of course they aren't. Phrases like "swept up in an ad targeted to a very broad group" are intended to be comforting but men who are very probably gay is a very broad group.

By the way, they didn't figure out you're gay from mining intimate details you want to keep private. They figured it out from information it never occurred to you to worry about: your age, where you live, your status as single or married and your Facebook friends.

I wouldn't worry about Facebook, however. It would be against their interest to exploit this information in ways that might hurt you or others.

Feel better? You shouldn't.

Here is the problem: if Facebook can do it, so can lots of other people. And they can find the information they need to do this quite easily because it's on Facebook.

I hope this helps. JA