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"NULL out all identifying information" is anonymization, not deleting the information.
by FigmentEngine 5y ago
"NULL out all identifying information" is anonymization, not deleting the information.
- duncans 5y agoI wrote zeroes to my hard drive. Would you consider the data on my hard drive merely anonymized, or is it deleted?
- ranguna 5y agoIt's deleted because all connections (and meta data) has been erased. In a database, if you null all fields but keep the entries and their inter table relationship intact, you still have identifiable data up to a certain point. Imagine you have data of specific people and you only have one person per country, having a user and country relationship, if you null a single data of a specific user, you'll still be able to find the user just by analysing to which country that user was connected + some external information. This is the classical problem of deriving personal data from statistical reports and why data anonymisatiom is so complex.