Anonymous meta-data can be reliably de-anonymized with only three public data points

Evidence

However, with as little as three bits of data easily culled from the public record—birth date, zip code, and sex—reidentification science has demonstrated its ability to de-anonymize meta-data with “disturbing ease.” In a summary of this research, legal scholar Paul Ohm writes that “re-identification makes all our secrets fundamentally easier to discover and reveal. Our enemies will find it easier to connect us to facts that they can use to blackmail, harass, defame, frame or discriminate against us.… This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law.” Regarding the massive caches of supposedly anonymous behavior surplus, Ohm calls them “databases of ruin.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 765

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the foundational surveillance-capitalism claim about behavioral surplus from earlier chapters, and to broader privacy-death literature like Latanya Sweeney’s foundational work on reidentification. — connects to: Supposedly anonymized location data can identify individuals’ home addresses — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 543; There is no known effective method to anonymize location data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 767; Anonymized medical records can be re-identified using public voter lists — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2298 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Anonymized medical records can be re-identified using public voter lists #exemplifies (0.92) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2298
• There is no known effective method to anonymize location data #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 767
• Location and phone-sensor data reveal individuals and moods even when anonymized #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 766