Article: How Privacy Vanishes online
Ok, maybe the post title is a bit dramatic. But the article mentions that data mining from even video rental history on Netflix can be used to identify individuals. In short, data mining a constellation of personal information from various social media websites can identify individuals even if a person doesn't attach his/her name to all her internet activity.
"On Friday, Netflix said that it was shelving plans for a second contest — bowing to privacy concerns raised by the F.T.C. and a private litigant. In 2008, a pair of researchers at the University of Texas showed that the customer data released for that first contest, despite being stripped of names and other direct identifying information, could often be “de-anonymized” by statistically analyzing an individual’s distinctive pattern of movie ratings and recommendations. In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual’s actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet.
You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing."
Don't start panicking just yet:
"So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers."
Phew. Well, for now.
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