Due to concerns about customer privacy, Netflix has canceled a contest that had been intended to improve its movie recommendation system.

"The decision was announced in a blog post published Friday, by Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt," writes The Register's Dan Goodin. "A previous competition that handed over anonymous user data to more than 50,000 contestants ended poorly after researchers showed it was possible to identify individuals' viewing habits by connecting the dots."

"Netflix's previous contest paid $1m for the winning submission to better predict movies users would like by crunching data of their previous selections," Goodin writes. "Researchers from the University of Texas quickly identified several users by comparing reviews in the Netflix data to those posted on the Internet Movie Database."

Click here to read the article at The Register.