On social networks like Facebook even if you have kept your profile very very private, people can just look at your friends list and get lots of vital information about you. Most of the social networks like Facebook & LinkedIn allow people to see your pic and friends list as part of the open access for visitors. In a study “You Are Who You Know:Inferring User Profiles in Online Social Networks” [PDF], conducted by Alan Mislove of Northeastern University and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems an algorithm was tested that could accurately infer the personal attributes of Facebook users by simply looking at their friend lists. The results show that certain user attributes can be inferred with high accuracy when given information on as little as 20% of the users.
[ Via Erik Hayden on Miller McCune and also cross-posted on Slashdot]
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