Why would a user who publicly rates movies on IMDb care about privacy of their Netflix record?
First, our algorithm works for any Netflix subscriber, not just those who also use IMDb. If their record is in the dataset and you know a few of the movies the subscriber watched prior to 2005, you can identify their record.Second, in our experiments, Netflix records contain many more movies than the public IMDb records, revealing much more information about the user than available from IMDb.Q: You are just linking an IMDb username to their Netflix record. An IMDb username is not an identity.On IMDb, users do not view their profiles as anonymous and there is no expectation of anonymity. As IMDb’s user profile page says, “Below, you can learn basic information about the user, such as their website address or personal biography (if they’ve chosen to enter either.) You can also see how long the user has been registered with the message boards, the last time they were active, and a log of their most recent posts. Most importantly, this profile page allows you to interact with the user thre
First, our algorithm works for any Netflix subscriber, not just those who also use IMDb. If their record is in the dataset and you know a few of the movies the subscriber watched prior to 2005, you can identify their record. Second, in our experiments, Netflix records contain many more movies than the public IMDb records, revealing much more information about the user than available from IMDb. Q: You are just linking an IMDb username to their Netflix record. An IMDb username is not an identity. On IMDb, users do not view their profiles as anonymous and there is no expectation of anonymity. As IMDb’s user profile page says, “Below, you can learn basic information about the user, such as their website address or personal biography (if they’ve chosen to enter either.) You can also see how long the user has been registered with the message boards, the last time they were active, and a log of their most recent posts. Most importantly, this profile page allows you to interact with the user t
