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DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY

Privacy beyond the individual

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Privacy regulations for online platforms allow users to control their personal data. But what happens when our private attributes or behaviour can be inferred without our personal data? Researchers reveal that the behaviour of individuals is predictable using only the information provided by their friends in an online social network.

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Fig. 1: Shadow profile after a user leaves a social network.

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Correspondence to David Garcia.

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Garcia, D. Privacy beyond the individual. Nat Hum Behav 3, 112–113 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0513-2

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