Facebook and Twitter see over half of web history
It's no secret that the US social networks can track a large part of user activity. In a study based on a large amount of user data, German and Swiss economists are now taking stock of what Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram find out about their Like, Share, and Login buttons.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others can track up to 52 percent of the pages that Internet users visit. To do this, they load trackers via like, share or login buttons, evaluate the surfing behavior of their users and thus draw conclusions even about people who are not themselves logged on there. This is the conclusion of a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and the universities of Zurich, Lausanne and Yale.
Data calculated from 5000 users
For the study, the economists calculated what data Facebook could theoretically store on the basis of user data from almost 5,000 people. Their result: around 40 percent of the time spent by users on the Internet could be tracked using the platform's technical capabilities.
"Because the companies hardly give any information about which algorithms they use, no one can say for sure what data is really stored and used," explains Hannes Ullrich, research associate at DIW Berlin. "But our research shows that the technical basis for monitoring a large part of Internet activity is available from online platforms."
Individual consumer profiles
The observed Internet histories are suitable for creating individual consumer profiles. According to the experts, it is attractive for companies to create such profiles because they can sell targeted advertising to providers of products and services.
In order to create consumer profiles, the platforms use so-called trackers, which are automatically loaded via Like, Share or Login buttons, for example - regardless of whether the person recorded is logged into the platform themselves or whether this button is clicked. In this way, Facebook could link the pages visited by its users with the user data stored on Facebook and draw conclusions about other visitors to these pages.
According to the study authors, this method can correctly estimate demographic characteristics such as age, gender or education level of non-users of the platforms with up to 65 percent certainty. "By comparing this with data from people who are logged in, consumer profiles can also be created about non-users, which the platforms or third parties can use for targeted advertising."
Source: pressetext.com
