Google Researchers Warn of Automated Social Info Sharing

holy_calamity writes "Researchers from Google have written a paper about how social networks can undermine privacy. The most interesting scenario they discuss is 'merging social graphs' — when correlating multiple social networks makes it possible to reveal connections that a person has intentionally kept secret (PDF). For example, it may be possible to work out that a certain LinkedIn user is the same person as a MySpace user, despite their attempting to keep their profiles separate. The Google solution is to develop software that screens new data added to a social network, attempting to find out if it could be fodder to such data mining."

Comments

Aggregation and correlation destroy privacy

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

This is a case where multiple pieces of information, that individually do not compromise one's privacy, can actually do so when aggregated and correlated together.

This sort of pattern is why something like Google Street View subverts the privacy laws that we have. Yes, a photo taken from a public location of things viewable from that location, by itself, does not violate privacy, and privacy law has been developed so that each individual photo that Google takes and publishes does not, on its own, violate anybody's privacy. What the law fails to capture is that putting a vast number of such photos together, correlating them with a geographical information system, yellow page listings, satellite imagery, internet search results, and offering it to the general public to use for free, without any restrictions of purpose, does massively violate privacy. So the standard response to privacy challenges to Street View ("the law allows you to take photos of any public place you want") just massively misses the point.

Other people may publish information about you

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Also in the "what do you expect?" vein, you're putting lots of personal information on various websites that are publicly available worldwide. What kind of privacy are you expecting?

While that is a completely fair thing to point out, there is a very important thing that it misses: other people can put information about you online, without your permission, and that information is just as subject to analysis as what you put up.

The two best examples that come to mind right away:

1. Facebook allows users to tag photos with the names of the people who appear in them.
2. Google Street View puts photos of your residence without asking you for permission, and correlates it to a bunch of other stuff like geographic information, satellite images, yellow page listings, web search results, etc..

Notice that both of these acts are perfectly legal, and while the second arguably should be regulated and restricted by law (the aggregation, correlation and publication parts, not the picture-taking part), the first one ought not to.