I think there's some evidence, take the old saying "three can keep a secret if two are dead" or it's variations. Even the Bible warns about how easily things get spread around.

But the Internet and communications moving to online text, etc, greatly increases the provability of the gossip, if you will. Which is a major change that we as a society haven't really adapted to. We treat "private" or "direct" chats as like talking in a cornfield; but before you just had a he said/she said situation, now someone can "drop receipts" or you can have whatever platform you're on hacked and everything spilled.