Social ties are effective profiling tool

A study published in February 2019 found that 95% of the predictive accuracy for an individual can be achieved solely by analysing their social ties; the person's data is not needed. Given as few as eight or nine of an individual's contacts, it should be possible to profile the individual even if they don't use the platform. This has profound privacy implications for protesters, elections, and misinformation campaigns.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0510-5.epdf

Writer: James P. Bag, Xipei Liu, and Lewis Mitchell

Publication: Nature

Publication date: 2019-02