Damn metadata.


‘Anonymous’ Users Can Be Pinpointed on Twitter with 96.7% Accuracy

Even if you think you’re browsing Twitter “anonymously,” machine learning algorithms can still pinpoint you in a crowd of 10,000 other users using metadata associated with your posts, according to a new study.

“Metadata” refers to data about other data. In the context of a Twitter post, this includes the date and time of the post, the number of characters in it, the device it was posted from, its grammatical style, the location it was posted from, and a host of other markers. The average tweet contains about 144 pieces of metadata.


Using machine learning, researchers at University College London and the Turing Institute have developed a method of identifying individual users with 96.7 accuracy using metadata alone. Even if your handle is “LibPwner2016,” the metadata can still reveal who you are. And most of that metadata is accessible through Twitter’s API....

www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/07/09/anonymous-users-can-be-pinpointed-on-twitter-with-96-7-accuracy/