Social networks, including Facebook is the flagship, pushing the boundaries of the law on personal data use. I look forward to many public and private initiatives, which first appear, who will oppose this state of affairs. This was the theme that Basile Segalen interviewed me as part of an article that takes as its starting point a study by Stanford University.

With approval, here is the reproduction of the article Basile Segalen, published in The Workshop BNP Paribas .

Targeted advertising is incompatible with the protection of privacy?

The recommendation systems on community platforms are relevant only when the protection of personal data is not available from other programs.

On social networks, no technique is currently effective in protecting personal data while allowing an appropriate referral system. This is the result of a study * conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Georgia Tech and Yahoo! Research. To show this, researchers have combined the recommender systems - to make connections between users and offer them products or contacts may be of interest - an algorithm to protect their personal data exists. The result is obvious: the scientists noted that the results lose relevance in a meaningful way.

The behavior of the user should be taken together

Whatever the type of recommendation and the method used, the incompatibility with the establishment of criteria is established confidential, according to researchers. "The assumption is correct, but does not truly reflect the latest developments in Web," said L'Atelier Franck Perrier Idaos CEO of a consulting firm specializing in Internet strategies. "To refine the relevance of these recommendations and strengthen its ad model, Facebook now integrates data from various community platforms," he notes. Thus, a vision focused on a single social network is less and less relevant. "The behavior of the user needs to be taken globally," added the specialist. According to him, the user office may have the illusion that it keeps its data on a site.

Only the user can protect their personal data

"But his confusion stems from the fact that he thinks 'profile' while Internet players are thinking 'association'," he adds. For the consultant, must therefore go beyond the question of the algorithms, asked by the U.S. study. The only way for the user to save their data and protect privacy of his own contacts is very secluded, or establishing itself a strategy. "It is possible to protect his family or his children, provided they make a choice, deliberately, and not to create social networks direct intimacy," he says.

(*) "On the Impossibility of preserving utility and privacy in social Personalized Recommendations