Anonymous Browser History Isn't Quite 'Anonymous' Anymore
Your online behavior and identity can be determined by linking browsing history with social media profiles.
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Princeton and Stanford University researchers will be presenting a research paper at the 2017 World Wide Web Conference Perth, Australia, in April, where they show that your social media profile like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit can be linked to your browsing history for companies to know who you are based on what you look for online.
"Each person's browsing history is unique and contains tell-tale signs of their identity"
While this isn't new for companies like Google or Facebook which are known to track users online and know their identities, but these are companies which disclose their tracking motives upfront which customers can choose to decline creating accounts with. The new research is not about this type of tracking, but about how anyone who has access to browsing history can identify a user through analyzing public information found online, such as what is publicly available on social media sites.
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Online trackers can de-anonymize web browsing data. Given a distinct social network for each individual and the unique list of links appearing in their own feed, and assuming that users visit links in their feeds with higher probability than any other user would, browsing history can be used to identify markers related to a public social media profile.
"Users may assume they are anonymous when they are browsing a news or a health website, but our work adds to the list of ways in which tracking companies may be able to learn their identities."
The FCC has recently adopted a new privacy rule that allows ISPs to store and use consumer data when it's "not reasonably linkable" to individual users.
The researchers developed a model and tested simulated browsing histories. They showed that with a history of 30 links originating from Twitter, they could deduce which corresponding twitter profile it came from more than 50% of the time.
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To see how well this model works in the real world, they recruited 374 people and asked them to donate their web browsing history's. With this data, they were able to correctly identify 70% of the participants through their public information on the Internet. The researchers further showed that many online trackers of data are embedded in many websites that enable this type of de-anonymization can be carried out with high accuracy.
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The research has effectively shown that it is easy to build a 'de-anonymizationer' to compare anonymous web browsing histories with links appearing in public social media accounts. There are strong limits to data anonymization. Rethinking our online privacy and data protection is something to consider in the age of information. We are leaving digital fingerprints that can be unique and linkable to our publicly disclosed identities.
Personally, I can attest to online tracking (but not to the above severity). I have gone searching for products, some services, and then later on I keep seeing ads for what I previously did searches for on many sites that have ads. The ads on unrelated sites, like 0-day downloads, still show me ads that target my browsing history. Facebook shows me the same ads. Somehow, through the cookies I get from certain sites, or some other way, they know what ads to show me.
References:
- Your 'anonmyized' web browsing history may not be anonymous
- De-anonymizing Web Browsing Data with Social Networks
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@krnel
2017-01-24, 9:58am
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This will become more of a problem with the invasion of IoT and other cross platform internet enabled devices. I found out recently that target uses the gps on your phone to see what products you are interested in then promotes them to you via web retargeting.
Good to know. Thanks for the feedback.
Do you think I should write a post about this? Not sure how many know about it.
http://lifehacker.com/how-retail-stores-track-you-using-your-smartphone-and-827512308
Yep. The question is, how will you use this information?
I have known that monitoring of my online and financial habits has long been possible, thus I took steps previously to limit my footprint. That is still a viable strategy, however one needs to decide for themselves what level of self-imposed restrictions they are willing to implement.
My attitude about such restrictions has changed in the last 3 years. I am no longer willing to be silent and hide myself away. So although I have "surfaced" so to speak and am online much more now, I still am cautious about what and where I put content out there.
No doubt about it, the more visible you are, the bigger your following, the more truth you speak - will attract more scrutiny by the "controllers". Count the costs, do your research and make a rational decision on how you proceed. Don't neglect to consider the costs for yourself, your loved ones and very importantly, for their future and that of humanity.
What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?
a good idea might be using your own url shortener for everythign you share so when you want you can just delete those
Another thoroughly insightful piece. Thank You K. Can't say I'm too worried about being Anonymous while on a news site. Might as well admit it, I'm a mark for pro wrestling and twitter is my jam.
https://twitter.com/jacobts/status/823912847084285952
If you are concerned about being vulnerable to online trackers, one of the best things you can do is install Ghostery, an extension that is available for most browsers.
The way Ghostery works is to identify trackers on a given webpage and prevent them from loading. As a result, trackers cannot report your online activity to the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter, or anyone else who might install trackers on a webpage.
Super! Thanks for the info and help to keep us from being tracked :)
No problem. Thanks for writing the article and getting the word about privacy out there!
Great information again, thanks. Now, I want to try the test provided by FOOTPRINT, I really wonder the extent of the anonymity... All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
I hadn't seen this particular research on it but I've been aware of the practice for some time now. This kind of thing needs to be resisted! 😱
The same is true for Bitcoin where you can also link your personal identity to your transactions in the blockchain history. The problem is that if you transfer money to someone you actually (or the other way around) you are revealing already one tiny part of your spending behavior. Then researchers used behavior clustering methods and they were able to find out the personal identity of 40% of all Bitcoin users (in an experimental setting). Even if you use multiple Bitcoin addresses you still cannot hide 100% your real identity. This was also very surprising (and shocking?) for me.
This is one of the reasons that the innovation in Monero is so important. Bitcoin is simply not sufficiently private. Monero, on the other hand, has a very high degree of privacy, particularly since they introduce confidential transactions sizes in the hard fork earlier this month.
I was sure about it!