Digital Privacy

(c) Facebook

Yes, there are still some people out there who refuse to join Facebook. And they refuse for good reasons, such as their personal privacy. However, it seems like Facebook has grown so big already, that staying off of it won’t protect your privacy as much as you think. According to a recent publication at the University of Heidelberg / Germany, it is possible to determine with an accuracy of at least 85% (!) if two people know each other, even if both are not on Facebook! Using machine learning methods, which analyze common friends of members as well as email contacts, scientists could deduct common friends of non-members and guess if two non-members know each other. And this does not even factor in such questionable practices as uploading cellphone contacts to social networks!

This is a quite significant finding, which shows that social networks like Facebook have become so ubiquitous that they have significant information about us, even if we never agreed to that. In many cases we cannot decide anymore what happens with our data, our “friends” or social networks decide for us!