The trouble is when we're holding on to the original data because we want the option to process it in new ways later on. The fundamental problem is that data co

The trouble is when we're holding on to the original data because we want the option to process it in new ways later on. The fundamental problem is that data correlates facts. Thus - as the article rightly points out - if you know some of the facts you can reconstruct identities. I find the distinction between information and exformation revealing: Information is the bits we gleaned from the data, exformation is the bits we discarded while reducing the data. The efficacy of an information processing system is in how much it discards while extracting the information we need. The expensive operation is not the recording but the forgetting. If you want to protect data from being stolen, distill it as soon as possible into the information you need. And destroy the rest. It comes down to the value of being able to re-run the analysis versus the effort to guard the data.