#DeleteFacebook? #DeleteTwitter? #FatLotOfGood that will do you

Lisa Vass, at Sophos’s Naked Security blog:

A study published on Monday found that when it comes to protecting our privacy, it isn’t quite that simple. In fact, we don’t have to actually have a social media profile in order to be known, thanks to the fact that all our predictable friends and colleagues can fill in the blanks.

…

Jim Bagrow, a mathematician at the University of Vermont who led the research, said in a statement that he and his team used statistical models to analyze data from more than 30 million publicly available Twitter posts from 13,905 accounts. Using that data, they used machine learning to accurately predict what a person would post based on what their contacts have posted.

What’s true for Twitter goes for Facebook, too, the researchers say: Even if you’ve never posted to either platform, it just takes between eight and nine of your friends to build a profile of your likes, interests and personality on social media.

A statement from Bagrow:

You alone don’t control your privacy on social media platforms. Your friends have a say too.

I still intend to #DeleteFacebook but I know that at best that will only deprive them of the information I’ve given them directly.