Researchers: It's Easy to Match Metadata To People

Stanford researchers say it is "trivially easy" to match metadata to the real people behind the calls. Trivially easy.

Mayer and Mutchler are running an experiment which works with volunteers who agree to use an Android app, MetaPhone, that allows the researchers access to their metadata. Now, using that data, Mayer and Mutchler say that it was hardly any trouble at all to figure out who the phone numbers belonged to, and they did it in just a few hours.

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"...queried the Yelp, Google Places, and Facebook directories. "

So you're saying if I put my phone number in a public place and attach my name to it, it's easy to find out who owns my phone number? No way!

Next they'll say they know where you live by looking at your license. Oh MY!

I'm glad they're talking about this either way even if some think it's plainly obvious. A lot of government people claimed they're 'just' collecting metadata. Well, stop collecting it, having my metadata is having access to almost everything I do. I don't care about the 'for your own safety' excuse, I want my liberty. Collecting this type of information has everything to do with communications control and nothing to do with national security.

Whoa! Did my tax money pay for Captain Obvious to conduct this study?

The key issue here, is that the NSA has been collecting this data for quite a while now, and proclaimed that it was anonymous. This article proves what i knew all along, and that is meta data is NOT anonymous when coupled with trivially easy to collect other data.

This should scare the hell out of people. Not because you are doing anything wrong, but that you might be tracked and eventually singled out because someone THINKS you might be doing something wrong. Nobody wants to be wrongfully accused, and this gathering of meta data is too easily misused to suit my mind.

Welcome to a world built for the unscrupulous.