What Is Counter-Profiling?
Counter-profiling is deliberately shaping the profile that data brokers and other collectors build about you, so that what they infer is wrong, thin or useless to whoever buys it. There is no standard definition of the term. This is my working one, and I’d rather say so than invent authority for it.
Profiling first
To counter profiling you need to know what profiling is. The researcher Roger Clarke describes it as inferring characteristics of a class of people from past data, then searching other records for people who match. A broker doesn’t need to know you. It needs a pattern, such as address history, relatives and purchases, that lets it guess income, routine or vulnerability.
An attacker uses a profile the same way. It is cheaper than surveillance. The people-search site has already done it.
What counter-profiling looks like
The tools are the ones in this glossary, used with a different goal. Instead of asking “is this record gone,” the question is “what would someone conclude from what’s left.”
- Remove the records that carry the strongest inferences, such as the current address and the family links.
- Break the links between identities. Separate email addresses, phone numbers and entity names mean one search doesn’t join everything.
- Add noise. Data poisoning puts plausible false details next to the true ones, so the profile is unreliable.
- Watch the inputs. A property record in your own name, a registration or a tagged photo can undo careful work.
The last point includes the people around you. The kidnapping article makes the case that your exposure is tied to your family’s, because these sites explicitly link relatives and associates. A clean profile for you and an open one for a roommate is a profile with a hole in it.
What it can’t do
It doesn’t make you invisible, and I’d be wary of anyone who says it does. It doesn’t work against someone who already knows you. It reduces what a stranger can learn cheaply and quickly, and it costs effort to keep up, because records come back.
How it relates to obfuscation
Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum’s book Obfuscation covers related tactics: deliberately ambiguous or misleading information used to interfere with data collection. Counter-profiling is that idea pointed at one target, the profile.
Sources
- Roger Clarke, Profiling: A Hidden Challenge to the Regulation of Data Surveillance.
- Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum, Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest, MIT Press, 2015.