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Is Netflix "borking" lesbians with subscriber data releases?

// December 18th, 2009 // Tech News

It was really just a matter of time before Netflix was the target of a class-action lawsuit over its privacy policies; academics have pointed out for years how the company’s release of “anonymized” movie rental data could actually be used to expose a particular user’s viewing choices. And yesterday’s Netflix lawsuit by “a lesbian who does not want her sexuality nor interests in gay and lesbian themed films broadcast to the world” covers all the usual bases. The suit, filed in a California federal court and first noted by Wired , blasts Netflix for perpetrating “the largest voluntary privacy breach to date” when it launched the first Netflix Prize contest to create a better movie recommendation engine. The contest offered a data file with a few million movie rentals in it. Names were not attached, but within weeks researchers had found a way to use an external data source to decode an individual’s viewing history with surprising accuracy.