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How about differential privacy?

• omeze 7y ago
  Differential privacy is more about preserving privacy from consumers of data (e.g. a user running a query) -- it doesn't have guarantees around what sort of data is collected (e.g. google could expose a differentially private API, but internally they would still have all of your data). Edit: after considering it more, I realize you can certainly apply some mechanisms from differential privacy to play a part in the data collection schemes.
• philippclassen 7y ago
  (Disclaimer: I work at Cliqz) Just saw this one. It is an old comment, but let me try to answer as I find the question interesting. The post on Human Web (https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-i...) has a brief section regarding differential privacy. Maybe check that one out first. My take on it: although we do see value in differential privacy, we do not believe it fits well in our particular case. The critical moment is to decide what data should be sent by the client. Once data it is out, it is out. It is not possible to apply anonymization once it is on the server. If someone knows how it can be done safely, I would be highly interested. We consider our chosen approach - breaking record linkage before sending - safer for our use-case and simpler. Do not underestimate the simplicity argument. Differential privacy is a powerful technique, but it is also very complex; there are lots of pitfalls and it is crucial to make good choices for the parameters. Would be a good topic for another blog post. ;-)