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A new study from Worcester Polytechnic Institute shows mobile online social networks are providing tracking sites and other third parties with users' physical locations or the unique identifiers for their mobile devices and other information. The study found that all 20 sites examined leaked some kind of private information to third-party tracking sites.
The paper, "Privacy Leakage in Mobile Online Social Networks" (PDF), was unveiled last week at the 3rd Workshop on Online Social Networks conference in Boston. The researchers took a look at 13 mobile online social networks, including Flickr, Loopt and Foursquare, as well as seven traditional online social networks that allow users to access them with mobile devices. In the latter group were social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
The researchers examined what personal information users can - or in some cases, must - post on these sites and at the sites' privacy policies. They also monitored what data gets sent to third-party tracking sites. What they found is that all 20 sites leaked some kind of private information to third-party tracking sites.
Read the entire eWEEK Security Watch blog here.
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