Looks like Tim O’reilly has brought some awareness to an interesting privacy issue judging by the RT activity his post has received on Twitter. Tim cites the efforts of some recent research findings that has indicated that a person’s privacy can be compromised by searching out 3 common demographic variables, these include ZIP code, Date of birth, and gender. What this means is that 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on 5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth, furthermore, half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only place, gender, date of birth, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality. So essentially, based on these data, you may like to start hiding that Date of Birth demographic on your social media profiles, particularly facebook where many users freely boast their date of birth to the world. Details on the research can be found HERE
