The second step down is data that can be indirectly, yet unambiguously, linked to an individual.
These data are collectively called ‘direct identifiers.’ At the top is data that can directly identify an individual: a name, phone number, or Social Security number. Personal data exists on a spectrum of identifiability. Re-identification of anonymized data has grave privacy and policy implications as regulators, businesses, and consumers struggle to define privacy in the modern permanently-recorded age. This combined information often reveals directly identifying information about an individual. Scrubbed data is commonly re-identified by combining two or more sets of data to find the same user in both. This means scrubbed data can now be traced back to the individual user to whom it relates. The proliferation of publicly available information online, combined with increasingly powerful computer hardware, has made it possible to re-identify “anonymized” data. The theory is that once the data has been scrubbed, it cannot be used to identify an individual person and is therefore safe for sale, analysis, and use. There is no regulation of “anonymized” data: it can be sold to anyone and used for any purposes. 1 Paul Ohm, Broken Promises: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization, 57 UCLA L. However, if that data is scrubbed, of a small category of personally identifiable information it can be considered “anonymized” data. That aggregated data is also sold and transmitted to third parties, such as analytics companies, marketing companies, or commercial data brokers.Ĭurrently there are some legal protections that aim to prevent the disclosure or sale of personally identifiable information, such as name, Social Security numbers, and medical conditions when data is sold or transmitted.
Netflix analyzes user preferences to recommend movies medical researchers study patient data to find new treatments and cures and Google reviews search queries to improve its search results. This data is then analyzed and used by the entities that collect it. Beyond that, every census report, home purchase, voter registration, medical history, and cell phone geolocation is recorded and stored. Each credit card purchase, medical diagnosis, Google search, Facebook post, or Netflix preferences is another recorded data point about that individual user. Every interaction with technology creates data about that user. Today, almost everything about our lives is digitally recorded and stored somewhere.
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