Identifying People using Anonymous Social Networking Data

Bruce Schneier, writing in his Schneier on Security blog, details the work of two University of Texas at Austin scientists who have developed an algorithm that allows them to take anonymous social networking data and use it to pull out actual names and addresses.

So much for the anonymity.

Social graphs from Twitter, Flickr and Live Journal were used in the research.

The pair found that one third of those who are on both Flickr and Twitter can be identified from the completely anonymous Twitter graph. This is despite the fact that the overlap of members between the two services is thought to be about 15%.

The researchers suggest that as social network sites become more heavily used, then people will find it increasingly difficult to maintain a veil of anonymity.

You've been warned.

Identifying People using Anonymous Social Networking Data