Personal identifying information leaked via social networks

A study on the use of online social networking sites has concluded that information leaks are occurring, which could potentially allow users to be linked via these accounts. The information leak comes via information transmitted in HTTP headers, such as the referral header, request-URI and cookies that are sent to third-party aggregators. These third-party aggregators are typically ad networks and analytics software.

As a consequence of this leakage, it is possible for the third-party aggregators mentioned above to link visitors to social network profiles. And since the majority of users leave their privacy controls to default, there is a significant risk that these users can be identified.

The findings of this study do not come as a surprise to me personally, since I am cognizant of the technical underpinnings related to browser interactions across websites. However, I think most users probably never considered the implications of being identified via their social networking profile in such a manner.

Of course, this study does not refer to you if you don't have an account with any social networking site. Yet, when you consider the number of users who are perpetually on Facebook or other social networking site, this is probably a valid cause for concern.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek

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