Fall 2009 Seminar Series

DATE: October 8th
LOCATION: E51-325
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following in the ORC ConferenceRoom, E40-106

SPEAKER:
Jon Kleinberg

TITLE
Digital Traces and Anonymized Networks

ABSTRACT
An increasing amount of research into on-line social networks and social processes focuses on datasets obtained by measuring the interactions among individuals who have strong expectations of privacy.
To preserve privacy in such instances, the datasets are typically anonymized -- the names are replaced with meaningless unique identifiers, so that the structure of the system is maintained while private information has been suppressed.  Unfortunately, there are fundamental limitations on the power of such approaches to preserve privacy; we will discuss some of these limitations, some related open questions, and some broader implications.

This talk includes joint work with Lars Backstrom and Cynthia Dwork.