This is the worrying conclusion of a study conducted by IT security researcher Yves-Alexandre Montjoye (Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA).
To achieve this, the American researcher analyzed the anonymous data purchases by card made by 1.1 million Americans, over a period of three months.
Then, by matching these data (date of purchase, where the property was purchased, amount paid) with those available publicly on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks (mention of an evening spent in a restaurant with friends, photography of clothing purchased in a given shop …), Yves-Alexandre Montjoye and colleagues have found that it is possible to identify many of the buyers (90% of them according to the authors of the study – a proportion which, however, seems very high, and which can possibly make the assumption that it would be lower in France, where the intensive use of social networks is slightly smaller than in US).
The authors of the study, women and people with high incomes have proven to be those most easily identified, probably because their consumption patterns are more diverse, which distinguishes them easier from other consumers.
