Communications of the ACM
Tool Makes Online Personal Data More Transparent
Columbia University researchers Roxana Geambasu (left) and Augustin Chaintreau (right) say their XRay tool will help reveal how websites use personal data.
Credit: Columbia University
Columbia University professors Roxana Geambasu and Augustin Chaintreau, along with Ph.D. student Mathias Lecuyer, have developed XRay, a tool that seeks to reveal what personal data is being mined to craft online advertisements, product recommendations, and special pricing offers. XRay uses experimentation and correlation to determine what user inputs yield what type of outputs.
The researchers began by using Gmail to send emails with specific keywords and then analyzed the targeted ads, email offers, and other outputs they yielded. For example, they found subprime loan offers targeted accounts tied with debt and ads for various spiritual groups or products targeted accounts that had sent emails hinting at possible depression.
XRay currently works on Gmail, Youtube, and Amazon, but the researchers say they tested it with other online services and found it scales very easily. Geambasu says XRay is a first step toward ensuring greater transparency in how personal data moves around and is used online. The open source tool has been made available to auditors online. Geambasu and Chaintreau described XRay this week at the USENIX Security conference.
From Columbia University
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