Daily Spotlight on Education 03/18/2010
How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time - NYTimes.com
Data that is innocuous or is it? Excellent article from the New York Times on Privacy.
"In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male.
So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers.
But the F.T.C. is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening on Wednesday the third of three workshops on the issue. "
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
