From The Guardian
AI allows hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, study finds
By Isaaq Tomkins
AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.
In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.
The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a “fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online...”
AI is not a magic weapon against anonymity online. While LLMs can de-anonymise records in many situations, sometimes there is not enough information to draw conclusions. In many cases, the number of potential matches is too large to narrow down.
“They can only link across platforms where someone consistently shares the same bits of information in both places,” said Prof. Marti Hearst of UC Berkeley’s school of information...
Marti Hearst is a Professor at School of Information focusing on human-computer interaction, information visualization, computational linguistics, search and information retrieval, improving MOOCs and online education
