What is actually the most used emoji on Tinder? And which is the most popular #hashtag? This talk not only shows funny evaluations of “open” APIs with the in-memory computing framework Apache Ignite, but also takes a critical look at the mass collection and “provision” of private data.
There are hundreds of popular apps in which users voluntarily share private data. “Sharing” also means that others can view this data. Only to a limited extent and in bits and pieces, of course. One example of such an app is Tinder, which allows users to reveal photos, profiles and interests to the world.
However, the apps have to communicate with a server - and this server usually has an API that can also be accessed with alternative clients, e.g. from GitHub.
If you build a crawler for this client, you can quickly download the available profiles. And if you then feed the downloaded data into an analysis tool, you can obtain statistics and other information.
On the other hand, APIs offer the opportunity for massive violations of privacy and fundamental rights.
This talk deals with several aspects of private but open APIs on the Internet:
This talk also looks at the technical side of API evaluation: