Social networking sites leaking personal information to third parties, study warns

Many major social networking sites are leaking information that allows third party advertising and tracking companies to associate the Web browsing habits of users with a specific person, researchers warn. That's the conclusion of a study on the leakage of personally identifiable information on social networks done at AT&T Labs and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The findings, which appears to have received scant public attention so far, was presented by the study's two researchers at a conference in Barcelona more than a month ago. Earlier this week, civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) referred to the study in a blog post. The research, by Craig Wills of Worcester Polytechnic and Balachander Krishnamurthy of ATT, presents "some interesting technical details" on how social networking sites are leaking personal data. "In some cases, the leakage may be unintentional, but in others, there is clever and surreptitious anti-privacy engineering at work," the EFF said.