Two studies were issued this week in the field of privacy and protection of personal data, the first confirmed that the large browsing programs are widely used, instantaneously leaking personal data to the servers of the companies producing them, and to many of its partners and customers from marketing agencies, government agencies, etc., and includes data related to the person's activity on the Internet , And his various behaviors in browsing, buying and communicating with others.
While the second study confirmed that the process of deleting the identity and removing the identification data that enables inferring the true identity of the owner of the data, is not feasible. To prove this, the researchers developed a new algorithm that managed to recover the deleted identity of users, based on very small and sparse portions of their data, and that the success rate and accuracy of that was 99.8%.
The first study was issued by Trinity College Dublin, and was prepared by Dr. Douglas Leith, a specialist in privacy issues and the protection of personal data security, and was conducted on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge , "Open source" briv, and "yandex" are commonly used in Russia.
The full study was published in the form of an academic paper on the website scss.tcd.ie. Finally, the second study was conducted by researchers at the Imperial College in London and the University of Louvain Cathedral in Belgium, and they published it in the journal Nature Communications. The technical department of the New York Times published a full summary of it.
Data transfer
A Trinity College study in Dublin found that all browsers that were subject to the search, with the exception of the Brave browser, instantaneously transmit the components of the user’s browsing history with the companies they own, along with “identifiers” that indicate the user’s location or identity. Browser companies argue that they remove information indicating the identity of the owners of this data when it is sent, but the study confirms that storing data on company servers also means that it can be shared with government agencies or external business partners.
The most protected "Brave"
According to the results of the study, the "open source" browser got the highest classification in terms of privacy and protection of the personal data of its users, as the study showed that it does not use any "identifiers" that allow tracking the user's location or identity over time, and does not transfer or make the user data in the sharing mode With the backend servers of the browser or any other party, it is therefore the most private browser among the browsers studied.
In the second level of privacy, the browsers came «Google Chrome», «Mozilla Firefox», and «Apple Safari», where it was found that «Chrome» shares the details of the user’s activity with Google’s servers, through a feature with the settings of the program can be disabled, But the default mode is on, and the browser sends the data via the autocomplete feature to search in «Chrome».
The same applies to the Firefox browser, which distinguishes user data with a unique "identifier", and sends browsing data to Mozilla servers.
As for the Safari browser, it was found that it includes a feature to protect the privacy of the default start page, and it contains some tracking features that can be disabled through the settings, but it was also found that it leaks information to Apple's servers, in particular the iCloud cloud service of « Apple, "as well as other third parties, led by" Twitter "and" Facebook ", using unique identifiable identifiers.
Finally, "Microsoft Edge" and "Yandex" came as the worst browsers surveyed in terms of breaching privacy and protecting data, and researchers described them as more disturbing compared to other browsers.
They also send browsing data via the autocomplete search function, and the user cannot disable these functions.
Previous experiences
Scientists at the universities of "Imperial College" in London and "Leuven" in Belgium, said that this is not the first time that scientists have proven that the data obtained from "identifiers" are in fact not anonymous data at all. In 2016, individuals were identified through the internet browsing records of 3 million Germans, data that was purchased from a seller. Later, genetics showed that the identity and identity of individuals whose data were placed in DNA databases could be determined and classified as data without IDs.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Identity Algorithm
Scientists at the universities of "Imperial College" in London, and "Leuven" in Belgium, conducted their research on data known as "data deleted from identifiers", which is data for medical records, data collected by national statistical authorities, data for web browsers, and other data In other areas, from which parts or pieces of data are removed from which the identity and identity of their owners can be inferred, and therefore can be shared and sold without violating privacy laws.
The scientists said that they invented an algorithm or mathematical model using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, which can determine the person’s identity and true personality, from the deleted data from personal “identifiers”, with a success rate of 99.8%, by relying on the link between very small and dispersed “data molecules”, And that this algorithm only needs 15 statements or attributes about a person to arrive at their true identity, such as gender, zip code or marital status. Whereas, the data that has been omitted from it are "identifiers", sometimes containing 248 of the data or different characteristics of one person, as is the case with the data of family characteristics that the US Census Bureau deals with. To validate its results, the research team has published this complete algorithm on the Internet, for anyone to use.