[LINK] New software can identify you from your online habits

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

New software can identify you from your online habits
16 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Paul Marks
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19426046.400&feedId=being-human_rss20

If you thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about 
your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, 
entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent 
others from working out exactly who you are.

That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The 
computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your 
name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing 
telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea 
is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places.

Previous studies show there are strong correlations between the sites 
that people visit and their personal characteristics, says software 
engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing, China. For 
example, 74 per cent of women seek health and medical information 
online, while only 58 per cent of men do. And 34 per cent of women surf 
the internet for information about religion, whereas 25 per cent of men 
do the same.

While each offers only a fairly crude insight, analytical software could 
use a vast range of such profiles to perform a probabilistic analysis of 
a person's browsing history. From that it could make a good guess about 
their identity, Hu and his colleagues last week told the World Wide Web 
2007 conference in Banff, Canada.

Hu's colleague Hua-Jun Zeng says the software could get its raw 
information from a number of sources, including a new type of "cookie" 
program that records the pages visited. Alternatively, it could use your 
PC's own cache of web pages, or proxy servers could maintain records of 
sites visited. So far it can only guess gender and age with any 
accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to "refine the 
profiles which contain bogus demographic information", and one day 
predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your 
location. "Because of its hierarchical structure - language, country, 
region, city - we may need to design algorithms to better discriminate 
between user locations," Zeng says.

However, Ross Anderson, a computer security engineer at the University 
of Cambridge, thinks the idea could land Microsoft in legal trouble. 
"I'd consider it somewhat pernicious if Microsoft were to deploy such 
software widely," he told New Scientist. "They are arguably committing 
offences in a number of countries under a number of different laws if 
they make available software that defeats the security procedures 
internet users deploy to protect their privacy - from export control 
laws to anti-hacking laws."

 From issue 2604 of New Scientist magazine, 16 May 2007, page 32

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au