The following is from an article posted at naharnet.com:
As more and more of our personal data — and those of the people we know and are related to — gets posted online, the anonymity promised by the remove of a computer screen gets more and more elusive, according to a new study out Thursday in the U.S. journal “Science.”
…The data was anonymous: the participants’ names were not published.
But using the information that was provided, including age and where they live, along with freely available Internet resources, the researchers were able to identify nearly 50 of the individuals in the genomic database.