Raising further questions about privacy on the internet, researchers from Princeton and Stanford universities have released a study showing that a specific person's online behavior can be identified by linking anonymous web browsing histories with social media profiles.
来自普林斯顿大学和斯坦福大学的研究人员的一份调查报告，引起了人们对互联网隐私问题的进一步关注：只需将匿名网页浏览历史与社交媒体资料关联起来，你在网络上的一举一动便一览无余。
"We show that browsing histories can be linked to social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook or Reddit accounts," the researchers wrote in a paper scheduled for presentation at the 2017 World Wide Web Conference Perth, Australia, in April."
“我们的调查结果显示，浏览历史可以被关联到诸如推特，脸书，红迪网之类的社交媒体资料上。”研究人员在一份将用于4月份澳大利亚珀斯2017万维网会议的文件上这样写道。
"It is already known that some companies, such as Google and Facebook, track users online and know their identities," said Arvind Narayanan, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton and one of the authors of the research article.
“我们已经知道，有一些公司会追踪用户的上网足迹，知道用户的身份，比如谷歌和脸书。”普林斯顿计算机科学的助理教授、这篇研究报告的作者之一阿尔温德·纳拉亚兰如是说道。
"But those companies, which consumers choose to create accounts with, disclose their tracking.The new research shows that anyone with access to browsing histories -- a great number of companies and organizations -- can identify many users by analyzing public information from social media accounts,"Narayanan said.
“但是这些广大用户选择注册与使用的公司，它们公开了自己追踪用户信息的行为。新的研究结果显示，有海量的公司和组织都能通过分析用户在社交媒体账号上公开的信息，确定用户的身份。”纳拉亚兰称。
"Users may assume they are anonymous when they are browsing a news or a health website, but our work adds to the list of ways in which tracking companies may be able to learn their identities," said Narayanan.
纳拉亚兰说，用户可能会认为，在浏览一些新闻网站或者健康网站的时候，自己是匿名的，但是研究报告却向大家展示了这些公司通过一些手段确定用户身份的可能性。
In the article, the authors note that online advertising companies build browsing histories of users with tracking programs embedded on webpages. Some advertisers attach identities to these profiles, but most promise that the web browsing information is not linked to anyone's identity.
研究报告中，作者记录道：在线广告公司将追踪程序嵌入网页，从而建立起用户浏览记录的档案。一些广告商会将用户的身份添加至这些档案文件中，不过绝大多数的商家都承诺，用户在浏览这些网站时，其身份信息是安全的。
The researchers wanted to know if it were possible to de-anonymize web browsing and identify a user even if the web browsing history did not include identities.
研究人员试图弄清，是否当网络浏览历史不含身份信息时，也能根据网页浏览的数据分析出用户的身份呢？
"Each person's browsing history is unique and contains tell-tale signs of their identity," said Sharad Goel, an assistant professor at Stanford and an author of the study."
每个人的浏览历史都是独一无二的，而这里面处处包含着暴露其身份的蛛丝马迹。”斯坦福大学的助理教授，同时也是研究报告作者之一的夏瑞德·高尔这样说道。
（翻译：Rory）