You're extrapolating from one comment the viewpoints of everyone who cares about privacy? That's quite ridiculous. As another commenter has mentioned, de-anoym

You're extrapolating from one comment the viewpoints of everyone who cares about privacy? That's quite ridiculous. As another commenter has mentioned, de-anoymising data isn't that difficult [1]. Why should privacy advocates 'make reasonable concessions'? What are they holding us back from? What concessions is the other side making? Who exactly is on each of these sides anyway? Your comment isn't particularly clear on these points nor on why the opposite view is any better (other than we get nice graphs occasionally). There are cogent arguments to be made on either side here but you've made none. > "I'd hate to lose this data just because a minority think its a threat to their civil rights." Minorities matter and it's ironic that you bring up civil rights. There are plenty of example from history so please do look them up. [1] I'm not saying it's possible for the graphs in the article, but if one had access to the (anonymised) data that produced them, it may be possible to combine with other data and ultimately identify individual users.