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A comment on Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling anonymized NHS data. Parent comment

Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by marcinzm on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:41AM (#20145727)
To be more specific she de-anonymised 7 individuals in the data set and claimed she could do more (if you used someone's semi-personal information).

The risk with good de-identification is generally not that they can find everyone but that given enough knowledge they can find one individual. Or in other words, that your friend find you in the data set with enough effort. It's also why you're supposed to remove famous people from such data sets.

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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by cs02rm0 on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:05AM (#20145910)
> It's also why you're supposed to remove famous people from such data sets.

I foresee an article - top 10 signs you shouldn't trust a dataset is sufficiently anonymised.

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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by luckylion on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:48AM (#20145773)
> It's also why you're supposed to remove famous people from such data sets.

Because they deserve special protection the mere mortals don't?

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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by marcinzm on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:53AM (#20145808)
Because their personal information is public thus everyone has it which makes re-identification much easier. Although nowadays there's so much information out there that "famous" covers a lot of the population.

That said, a public data where you can re-identify your friends should not have been released in the first place.

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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by Ensorceled on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:00AM (#20145864)
But the famous have to deal with paparazzi! Peons are only exposed to insurance companies digging for pre-existing conditions, stalkers, violent exes, potential employers, ...
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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by roscorollo on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:58AM (#20145854)
Because the average "famous" individual has far more personally identifiable data out for public digest than you or I, It's not about special treatment, just understanding the realities.
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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by luckylion on Monday June 10, 2019 @08:05AM (#20145916)
Sure, but the publicly available data is huge for lots of people. I don't see why you'd make an exemption for celebrities. If you can deanonymize people in sensitive data sets, don't release them. Saying "we'll protect the VIPs, the rest can go deal with the fallout of their employers looking at their personal health issues" isn't an option to me.
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Re:Only 13% of UK adults trust big tech firms with handling ... by Ensorceled on Monday June 10, 2019 @07:50AM (#20145793)
> It's also why you're supposed to remove famous people from such data sets.

That's a very Boomer/Gen X thought pattern, Gen Y, Z and Alpha may not be famous yet but will be included in the data set.

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