Linking Users Across Domains with Location Data

[getopt]

Ubiquitous tracking, fingerprinting and surveillance are the pests of our days.

While defense against this threats become more and more difficult, new methods unveil that the problem gets worse than ever.

I like to point to a brand new research publication you might be interested in:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160413140113.htm

Now, a team of computer science researchers at Columbia University and Google has identified new privacy concerns by demonstrating that geotagged posts on just two social media apps are enough to link accounts held by the same person.

Of the many digital traces we leave in daily life, location metadata may be the most revealing.

The team will present its results at the World Wide Web conference in Montreal on April 14. You may read their paper in advance:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~mani/pub/RiedererWWW2016.pdf

 

[Deleted member 9563]

Had a quick look. It is difficult to avoid the possibility of being intersected. I watch myself as a matter of course, but can still see how it can all be connected. I think the only way to really minimize this is to go for as complete anonymization as possible - but that's a real drag. I just obfuscate by mostly using a VPN and limiting my profile with the big guys and staying away from having a personal relationship with them. I don't think Google, for example, is dangerous, but what they're doing is. Even with my efforts (admittedly slightly lazy) someone could probably get a passport in my name if they tried hard enough. People who don't try at all could certainly be pwned with almost no effort should the on-line environment turn that way, or their luck run out. It's certainly not just a matter of avoiding phishing scams or malware. In fact I think those things are going to be old school one of these days.