Facebook could predict when you will die

Facebook not only has the ability to gather information about your day-to-day life, but the social media application might also be able to predict when you will die.

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The New York Times examined some of the patent applications Facebook has made since the social media website went public in 2012.

One of those patent applications was for Facebook to predict a user’s future by using their posts, messages, credit card transactions and location. This information could allow the social media website to predict major life events such as a birth, a graduation or even a person’s death. Creepy, right?

Facebook has been under fire as of late due to its controversial privacy policies and the amount of information it collects from its more than 2 billion monthly active users.

In March, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, gained access to nearly 87 million Facebook users’ information. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since been apologizing for the data breach and attempting to move on to make the application better for users.

Other patent applications that Facebook has applied for include reading a person’s relationships based on how many times they visit someone’s profile and using a phone microphone to identify what TV shows someone watches and if they mute commercials. Oh, and Facebook applied for a patent to use the location of your phone in relation to other peoples’ phones to figure out who your friends are and how many hours you sleep. Again, super creepy.

Even though Facebook says people should not take its patent applications as firm plans for the company’s future, it’s still a little alarming. If the social media site was to harvest this information, it is scary to think what it could possibly be used for.

What do you think?