Forskare vid AT&T Labs och Worcester Ploytechnic Institute har undersökt hur säker hanteringen av personlig data är mellan sociala nätverk och 3e part. Resultatet är, inte helt oväntat, inte så betryggande.

"When you or I create an account on an online social network, there's a unique identifier that's always associated with your account. That account number is being passed along to these third party aggregators. And along with the cookies these aggregators are already maintaining, they now can link that cookie to a social network identifier."

The study looked at twelve social networking sites: Bebo, Digg, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Imeem, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Orkut, Twitter, and Xanga.

"Not only do they know where I'm visiting, they know who I am," said Wills. "And that's disconcerting."
[...]
The report does not suggest that there's misuse of this information by third party aggregators and notes that contracts between social networking sites and third party aggregators may require aggregators not to use identifying information.

Läs rapporten, "On the Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information Via Online Social Networks,"

och artikeln i Information Week - Social Networks Leak Personal Information