“Metadata Can Expose Person’s Identity Even Without Name”
New Analytic Formula Identifies People Without Names, Account Numbers –WSJ Jan.29,2015

http://www.wsj.com/articles/metadata-can-expose-persons-identity-even-when-name-isnt-1422558349

According to this article “Your shopping habits can expose who you are even when you are just one of a million nameless customers in a database of anonymous credit-card records, according to a new study that shows how so-called metadata can be used to circumvent privacy protections in commercial and government databases” MIT explains that by using metadata and a new analytic formula that formulates patterns based on the data collected on the millions of shoppers…with the formula each transaction was time-stamped with the day of purchase and linked to a shop. Even with so little to go on, they could readily identify a person’s unique purchasing pattern. Once the person’s shopping habit where identified they where able to match their activity levels with that of their public online accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, & Linkedin that actually contained time and location of their location “check-in” apps.

“We think of metadata as being not as important as content, but it turns out to be remarkably revelatory,” said cybersecurity analyst Susan Landau at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who wasn’t involved in the project. “Little bits of data combined with the data we shed in other places really create portraits.”

introduced by Jimena Vazquez