Over half a billion people use online social networks, and a vast majority of these users post huge amounts of information about themselves to share with online friends and colleagues.

A new study has revealed that online social networks Leak Personal Information to Third-Party Tracking Sites, thereby putting Social Network Users “at Risk of Having Their Identity Linked With Their Browsing Behavior”.

According to the study, co-authored by Craig E. Wills- a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) – the practices of many popular social networking sites typically make users’ personal information available to companies that track Web users’ browsing habits and allow them to link anonymous browsing habits to specific people.

When you sign up with a social networking site, you are assigned a unique identifier. This is a string of numbers or characters that points to your profile. We found that when social networking sites pass information to tracking sites about your activities, they often include this unique identifier. So now a tracking site not only has a profile of your Web browsing activities, it can link that profile to the personal information you post on the social networking site. Now your browsing profile is not just of somebody, it is of you.

Like most commercial websites, online social networks use third-party tracking sites, called aggregators, to learn about the browsing habits of their visitors. Cookies are maintained by a Web browser and contain information that enable tracking sites to build profiles of the websites visited by a user. Each time the user visits a new website, the tracking site can review those cookies and serve up ads that might appeal to the user.

Though research aren’t exactly sure what tracking sites do with the unique identifiers that social networks transmit to them, there is still “a significant risk of having one’s identity linked to an inaccurate or misleading browsing profile”, especially in a case where the same computer is shared by various users. Even more worrisome is the fact that;

Once someone is in possession of your unique identifier, there is so much they can learn about you”

The new study was released on the 24th of August, and presented recently in Barcelona at the Workshop on Online Social Networks. You can veiw the full study here

Do you feel threatened or concerned by the thought of your personal information being Leaked. Leave a Comment below and let the world know.