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The article is in full damage control about how the data was anonymized. But they seem to be pretty squirrely about whether or not an "anonymous" device id show
by daenz 4y ago
The article is in full damage control about how the data was anonymized. But they seem to be pretty squirrely about whether or not an "anonymous" device id showed specific locations and routes. Even if an anonymized report for a device excludes demographic information, it's relatively trivial to cross-reference common travel patterns to a person's home and workplace, and de-anonymize them.
- 14 4y agoThis is what I said. Also we already know where there is surveillance there is abuse [1], thank you Snowden. I don’t know how the information was accessed but if you wanted to spy on a loved one you would simply track movements to and from home and work to de anonymize then see if she/he travels anywhere else. I don’t support this tracking and do believe they should at the very least have an opt out option but better would be opt in. [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2485190/nsa-admits-employees-spied-on-loved-ones.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2485190/nsa-admits-emp...
- majormajor 4y agoYeah, the only way you can anonymize this data is if you decouple all the data points from any way of re-associating them, and then take care of the timestamps too so you can't just find sequences that way. If someone's really clever they might even have good ways to get past that, but I have enough second-hand familiarity with some of the players in this space to know they're aware of at least those methods. Whether or not they DO it consistently... well, I'm not holding my breath.