Majorities think their personal data is less secure now, that data collection poses more risks than benefits, and believe it is not possible to go through daily life without being tracked. A majority of Americans believe their online and offline activities are being tracked and monitored by companies and the government with some regularity. It …
You’ve probably encountered a pair of shoes that won’t stop following you around the internet, appearing in advertisements on different sites for weeks. While many websites offer a way to opt out of targeted advertisements or unwanted emails, we discovered in our recent research that exercising privacy choices isn’t always easy. But that helped us …
Researchers from two universities in Europe have published a method they say is able to correctly re-identify 99.98% of individuals in anonymized data sets with just 15 demographic attributes. The suggestion is that no “anonymized” and released big data set can be considered safe from re-identification — not without strict access controls. “Our results suggest …
Continue reading “Researchers spotlight the lie of ‘anonymous’ data”
The Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission had a bright idea back in the mid-1990s—it decided to release “anonymized” data on state employees that showed every single hospital visit. The goal was to help researchers, and the state spent time removing all obvious identifiers such as name, address, and Social Security number.87 percent of all Americans could …
Continue reading ““Anonymized” data really isn’t—and here’s why not”