Identity Finding Algorithms: They Know Who You Are

Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say ‘Ni’ at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred, not even your anonymized personal identity data. -- Roger the Shrubber, as modified by Germaine

The New York Time reports on a new advance in ferreting out a person's identity from piles of “anonymized” personal information.

Your medical records might be used for scientific research. But don’t worry, you’re told — personally identifying data were removed.

Information about you gathered by the Census Bureau might be made public. But don’t worry — it, too, has been “anonymized.”

On Tuesday, scientists showed that all this information may not be as anonymous as promised. The investigators developed a method to re-identify individuals from just bits of what were supposed to be anonymous data.

In most of the world, anonymous data are not considered personal data — the information can be shared and sold without violating privacy laws. Market researchers are willing to pay brokers for a huge array of data, from dating preferences to political leanings, household purchases to streaming favorites. Even anonymized data sets often include scores of so-called attributes — characteristics about an individual or household. Anonymized consumer data sold by Experian, the credit bureau, to Alteryx, a marketing firm, included 120 million Americans and 248 attributes per household.

Scientists at Imperial College London and Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, reported in the journal Nature Communications that they had devised a computer algorithm that can identify 99.98 percent of Americans from almost any available data set with as few as 15 attributes, such as gender, ZIP code or marital status.

Even more surprising, the scientists posted their software code online for anyone to use. That decision was difficult, said Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a computer scientist at Imperial College London and lead author of the new paper.

This not the first time that anonymized data has been shown to be not so anonymous after all. In 2016, individuals were identified from the web-browsing histories of three million Germans, data that had been purchased from a vendor. Geneticists have shown that individuals can be identified in supposedly anonymous DNA databases.

The balance is tricky: Information that becomes completely anonymous also becomes less useful, particularly to scientists trying to reproduce the results of other studies. But every small bit that is retained in a database makes identification of individuals more possible.

“Very quickly, with a few bits of information, everyone is unique,” said Dr. Erlich.

The business community responds: The general attitude of the business community so far seem to be one of “Peek-a-boo, we see you and we’re gonna sell you as raw and hard as you will take it. You can’t hide behind that bush or under that rock.”

To help this science progress, all consumers have to do is just keep using their cell phones and computers as usual. Data harvesters will do the rest.

Secret police organizations, tyrants, oligarchs, con artists and used car salespersons throughout the world are also enthusiastic about this new breakthrough. One tyrant who spoke to B&B on condition of anonymity (President Trump) because he was not authorized to comment to the failing, fake-news press observed:

“This is wonderful! Nobody can hide from me now. Thank God for Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, online porn sites, credit reporting agencies, app developers and all other good, decent people working hard to suck every last detail about each American out of cyberspace and anywhere else there is to suck details from. . . . . Ew . . . . good thing I'm a germophobe. Wouldn't want to touch any germy details.”

And, there you have it. More scientific progress coming to invade your life soon. Assuming it hasn't been invaded already.

B&B orig: 7/24/19