De-anonymity

87% of you can be identified by reference to three facts: date of birth, zip code, and gender. Add another data-set to that, like, say, your movie watching preferences, and the number grows significantly higher.

Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for techniques for protecting the privacy of individuals in large databases by deleting information like names and social security numbers. These scientists have demonstrated they can often ‘reidentify’ or ‘deanonymize’ individuals hidden in anonymized data with astonishing ease. By understanding this research, we will realize we have made a mistake, labored beneath a fundamental misunderstanding, which has assured us much less privacy than we have assumed. This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law, regulation, and debate, yet regulators and legal scholars have paid it scant attention.

In some, perhaps meaningful, senses, you are your grande latte and your fucking khakis.

gauche
23 Sep 09