It now appears that the Tastes, Ties and Times dataset has been identified. According to privacy scholar Michael Zimmer, the dataset of Facebook profiles is from Harvard College. In my original post on the matter, I discussed how fingerprints of friend networks could be used to identify the dataset. It did not require such complicated measures. Using the codebook and statements from the researchers, Dr. Zimmer was able to target and ultimately identify the source of the dataset. Importantly, now that the dataset is identified, it would be trivial to run a network comparison and produce probability estimates of the individuals in the anonymized set. More →