4 ms·

For most people in the last 10 or 15 years, search and Wikipedia very often (probably almost always barring casualty treatment) presages what they later go to t

For most people in the last 10 or 15 years, search and Wikipedia very often (probably almost always barring casualty treatment) presages what they later go to their doctor about. What's complicated is Google and others are extreme data hoarders. Google can get the anonymous health records and run a fuzzy match of model records against Home, URL and gmail records. Find high confidence correlations against multiple conditions across the years, where the search preceded new medical entries for those conditions within x time. Now they're in this data set for condition y and oh lookie, they searched condition y related topics multiple times last year. Anonymous record i1389541 is Alice Smith of Wimbledon, set her adwords flags to condition y snake oil, sell record to UK life insurance consortium. [repeat]. No personal data was released, but you're fully de-anonymised. With enough data and history it becomes absurdly easy to decloak the majority with high or complete confidence. Welcome to the future. The alternative is find a way to prevent those uniquely identifying correlations at any point in the future, using techniques we haven't yet thought of. Which is probably impossible without diverging the anonymous medical record some considerable distance from reality. Faked enough to remain anonymous might not be helpful for research into a condition or its diagnosis...

OnlineGladiator 7y ago
The obvious solution to this problem, assuming it is as pervasive as you describe (I feel you are slightly exaggerating, but it's really not the important part), is to regulate the data hoarders. That said, that's completely different from what I implied in my original comment, so point taken.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Sure regulation is the solution, and I think a very slow journey to regulation has started. Whether it will come soon enough or be adequate are open to question. We've known Google and FB have engaged in systematic overreach every single time there is data for the taking. From streetview harvesting WiFi, or taking photos over privacy fences through systemic use of dark patterns. If I'm exaggerating it's from trying to make up a credible example off the cuff. When the Snowden revelations were coming thick and fast I remember several examples coming up around search stream and meta-data. Mostly terrifying as either could reveal in far more detail than actual content of messages what you appeared to be thinking in the moment. Tie that with medical and health data and any pretence of privacy falls.
- solstice 7y ago
  Force them to use old-school floppy disks to store and transmit records (you know, for backwards compatibility). That should be a good incentive to minimize data hoarding. /s

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

The obvious solution to this problem, assuming it is as pervasive as you describe (I feel you are slightly exaggerating, but it's really not the important part), is to regulate the data hoarders. That said, that's completely different from what I implied in my original comment, so point taken.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Sure regulation is the solution, and I think a very slow journey to regulation has started. Whether it will come soon enough or be adequate are open to question. We've known Google and FB have engaged in systematic overreach every single time there is data for the taking. From streetview harvesting WiFi, or taking photos over privacy fences through systemic use of dark patterns. If I'm exaggerating it's from trying to make up a credible example off the cuff. When the Snowden revelations were coming thick and fast I remember several examples coming up around search stream and meta-data. Mostly terrifying as either could reveal in far more detail than actual content of messages what you appeared to be thinking in the moment. Tie that with medical and health data and any pretence of privacy falls.
solstice 7y ago
Force them to use old-school floppy disks to store and transmit records (you know, for backwards compatibility). That should be a good incentive to minimize data hoarding. /s