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It doesn't require tracking. Tracking would mean I could tell that user x has returned n times. But I have no idea who has returned, only that someone has retur
by jcuenod 4y ago
It doesn't require tracking. Tracking would mean I could tell that user x has returned n times. But I have no idea who has returned, only that someone has returned n times.
The person standing outside Costco is counting people by giving them a colored sticker when they walk through the door. If they show up already having one, the counter issues a different color. Who has the stickers is unknown; only the number of stickers distributed in each color is known.
As has been said, this is not to say the technique couldn't be used for nefarious purposes. In this case, it's not, though.
- SkyBelow 4y agoThat's still a form of tracking. Maybe not enough to identify unique users in some use cases, but even just knowing someone has been here n times is enough if the user numbers are low enough that you can identify users by unique n counts and patterns of n (such as if one user is at 500 and another is at 490, if the second one is logging in daily while the first one hasn't logged in for a few months, and you see the 490 go 491, 492... when they go from 499 to 500, the chance when a 500 logs on tomorrow and becomes 501 it was the 490 account that has been logging in daily).
- jcuenod 4y agoMust admit, I've never thought of "number of times I've visited your site" as PII. Number of times I've visited every site in my browser history, maybe, but not "number of times I've visited this specific site". I'm thinking about it, but I'm not immediately convinced.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoThat's because you're forgetting the temporal domain. As in GP's example, a count alone may not mean much, but a time series of counts will allow you to uniquely identify a subset of the users.