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You are here: News > News > Recommendation contest invades privacy
| » IT Security NEWS |
| » 14 March 2010 |
| Recommendation contest invades privacy |
United States-based online DVD and Blu-ray rental-by-email service and video streaming site, Netflix, decided to revoke its recently opened contest. The competition was originally established for the purpose of improving the system of movie recommendation in the said site. However, the promised customer privacy was put on a risky spot, which led to the termination of the contest. Anonymity no longer assured
Netflix chief product officer, Neil Hunt, wrote the website’s standpoint in an official blog on Friday. A research based on a past competition led Netflix into this form of decision. During a contest about some time ago, it was figured out that it will be easy for a person to identify the viewing habit by just being observant. This was according to the result of the research conducted by a group wherein an unknown person’s data is distributed to about 50,000 participants.
According to Hunt, a case was filed by KamberLaw LLC against the website for the Netflix Prize sequel, which obviously may compromise the privacy of the users. And with this, Netflix came into a unified decision of cancelling the whole program that was broadcasted in the site on the 6th of August 2009.
Comparison of data leads to endangering privacy
The price for the previous contest launched by Netflix was 1 million US dollars. The winner earns the price if he or she submits an entry, which predicts the movies that users would most likely prefer. The smart guess of this participant will depend on the movies previously watched by these users.
Based on a research conducted by a team from University of Texas, it was easy to recognize quite a number of users through reviews at the Netflix website and the ones located in the Internet Movie Database.
Danger towards privacy becomes alarming
There was a case in opposition to Netflix, about a year ago, which involved a closeted lesbian mother. She filed the case because of the published data, which can be used against her in the future. In line with this, Federal Trade Commission also became alarmed with these privacy issues.
And as of the present, the latest contest formed by Netflix demonstrates the various kinds of risk for users when a distributed data contains identifying information of the people involved.
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