The problem is that deanonymization [1] is a thing. It's quite likely that that the Microsoft dataset is itself is anonymous but when it's correlated with other

The problem is that deanonymization [1] is a thing. It's quite likely that that the Microsoft dataset is itself is anonymous but when it's correlated with other datasets it becomes possible to surveil people. The danger here is that governments are happy to let businesses collect tons of anonymous data and then, when the moment is right, swoop in and correlate this data. This happens so often with stuff like IP addresses that they have to be considered personal data even though in theory the same IP address can be recycled. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-anonymization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-anonymization