: Anyone can spy on your anonymous browsing data by linking it to your social media activity You might think you've covered your tracks online, but your Facebook feed could be used to reveal your identity. A new study shows it's possible for companies to know your name your name and link it to your web activity by gathering data from you Facebook and Twitter. The research raises fresh concerns about online privacy, adding to a growing number of ways tracking companies may be able to learn more about individual web users. Researchers from the universities of Stanford and Princeton detailed their discovery in a paper due to be presented at the 2017 World Wide Web Conference Perth, Australia. 'We show that browsing histories can be linked to social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook or Reddit accounts,' they wrote. Privacy mode on web browsers disables browsing history and the web cache. This means you can the web anonymously without storing local data that could be retrieved at a later. It is however, still possible to identify commonly visited websites by associating the IP address at the web server. But researchers say there may be an easier way. Arvind Narayanan, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton, told Tech Xplore that companies - including Google and Facebook - track users. They also disclose this tracking information to third parties. The team found that companies with access to browsing histories could identify users by looking at public information displayed on open social media accounts. 'Users may assume they are anonymous when they are browsing a news or a health website, but our work adds to the list of ways in which tracking companies may be able to learn their identities,' he said. Focusing on publically available information only, the team created an algorithm to compare anonymous web browsing histories with links appearing in people's unprotected social media feeds. They found their code was able to detect patterns among the groups of data and use them to identify users. 'We show— theoretically, via simulation, and through experiments on real user data—that de-identified web browsing histories can be linked to social media profiles using only publicly available data,' they wrote. 'Our approach is based on a simple observation: each person has a distinctive social network, and thus the set of links appearing in one's feed is unique. 'Assuming users visit links in their feed with higher probability than a random user, browsing histories contain tell-tale marks of identity,' they added. While the researchers' method is not perfect and relies on unprotected social media feeds, it offers a chilling warning of how privacy can be breached online. The experts wrote: 'We evaluate this strategy on simulated browsing histories, and show that given a history with 30 links originating from Twitter, we can deduce the corresponding Twitter profile more than 50 per cent of the time.' And their success rate was even higher when they analysed web browsing information from 374 volunteers, identifying 70 per cent of them by comparing their web history to millions of public social media feeds. The scientists concluded: 'Since our attack attempts to find the correct Twitter profile out of over 300 million candidates, it is—to our knowledge—the largest scale demonstrated de-anonymisation to date.' HOW MUCH DO BROWSERS KNOW? While you might think that clearing your browsing history is enough to keep your activity private, a new website could make you think again. A creepy website called ClickClickClick has been developed to show how your online behaviour is constantly being measured by your browser. The website details your actions in real-time, from your movements on the page, to the other websites you have visited, in the hope of creating awareness on privacy in a playful manner. Clickclickclick.click was developed by VPRO, a Dutch media company, and Studio Moniker, an interactive design company. Roel Wouters, a designer at Studio Moniker, told MailOnline: 'We wanted to create awareness on privacy in a playful manner. The website – which does not cause damage to your computer - is simple, with a white screen and large green button, reading 'Button.' But from the second you visit the page, it starts detailing your actions in real-time. For example, the website will write 'Subject has visited seven websites before coming here' or 'Subject has clicked the button five times.'
