You’re a single white male, age 20 to 30, living in Boston.  Who cares?

Demographic targeting of Internet advertising leads to privacy violations. Our research team discovered for instance that Facebook advertisers can learn that users are gay, even when that information is marked as private by the users. We propose that demographic targeting, while valuable in “one-way” media like television and newspaper, is unneces­sary for the Internet. Instead, advertisers can directly target user interests, thus avoiding privacy violations.