Microsoft logged everyone's MSN IM conversations for a month

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=863

by nickb • 18 years ago

26 16 18 years ago

blogs.zdnet.com

tim2• 18 years ago

The inflection of the k-core graph at 20 is interesting. Rather than a fundamental property of human nature though, I'd speculate that this is the direct result of school class sizes.

eb2• 18 years ago

"Microsoft logged everyone's MSN IM conversations for 6 months"

This title is sensationalist and inaccurate. The article says that the dataset consists of one month of logging:

"'The compressed dataset occupies 4.5 terabytes, composed from 1 billion conversations per day (150 gigabytes) over one month of logging,' according to the researchers."

tlrobinson3• 18 years ago

Furthmore, the data is anonymous:

"We present a study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system."

dcurtis3• 18 years ago

How anonymous can your own voice be? Not very much, I don't think.

A checkbox on a survey can be anonymous, but my communication with other people would be impossible to record "anonymously." Remember all that flack Netflix got for releasing its "anonymous" records of people's movie-watching habits?

Just because my name is omitted doesn't make it morally unobjectionable to release the information without my consent, but a lot of huge companies have been doing this more and more often.

JulianMontez• 18 years ago

I don't want Hacker News to start having sensationalist headlines...

gojomo• 18 years ago

I suspect they logged the endpoints, not the contents of the conversations.

4.5 TB / (1 billion coversations/day * 30 days) = 165 bytes/conversation

That's enough for anonymized IDs, IPs, timestamps of start/finish (and probably individual messages in a many-message conversation) -- but not full transcripts or recorded voices.

wallflower• 18 years ago

Ever see that scene in Bourne Ultimatum when someone says a non-typical-english word. Blackbriar..

If it's non-SSL, then it's plain text. C'mon - you college folks must have tried to sniff the Ethernet LAN (my college used switching as a deterrent)

a-priori• 18 years ago

Not a problem anymore with pervasive wi-fi. Go to the library or something and sniff away. Or, get fancy and use Ettercap.

dmix• 18 years ago

This article could of been way more interesting if the writer wanted it to. This was just like reading a press release.

I know its a known theory, but they just proved it with a massive network.

tlrobinson3• 18 years ago

All of our data was anonymized; we had no access to personally identiﬁable information. Also, we had no access to text of the messages exchanged or any other information that could be used to uniquely identify users.

Microsoft logged everyone's MSN IM conversations for a month

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