Yahoo News Facebook and Twitter ‘are spying on you even if you don’t have an account’
Social networks know a huge amount about you, even if you decide to ‘opt out’ and never open an account.
A chilling new study by University of Vermont researchers found that it was possible to predict what someone might say on Twitter – even if they had never used it.
Instead, researchers were able to predict someone’s Tweets by looking at eight or nine of their contacts, and what they said.
For internet users, it means that it’s near-impossible to opt for privacy – as your data is easy prey as soon as friends sign up.
Looking at people’s friends (based on 30 million public posts from 13,905 users), the researchers were able to predict people’s future tweets with 95% accuracy.
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Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook can work out who people’s friends are based on their phone and email contacts.
The new study also shows that if a person leaves a social media platform — or never joined — the online posts and words of their friends still provide about 95% of the “potential predictive accuracy.’
Study author James Bagrow of the University of Vermont says, ‘Looked at from the other direction, when you sign up for Facebook or another social media platform, you think you’re giving up your information, but you’re giving up your friends’ information too!’
