Re:Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding E...
by robertlagrant on Saturday December 19, 2020 @05:15PM
(#25481761)
Fair point on PII.
But to the rest of your post: I don't think so. I think there an identification number is something like a government-issued ID number.
An online identifier would have to identify you (e.g. my Hacker News username is probably identifiable).
The way I think of it is if someone who isn't authorised to know who I am can look in a system at the number and then go off and correlate that info to find me without further reference to other data in said system.
A database ID doesn't count, because you'd then need to look up something actually identifiable in the system to figure out who I am; neither does an opaque tracking number.
My social security number is identifiable; my email address may be identifiable; if I gave birth in region X to octuplets, then that probably is too.
But to the rest of your post: I don't think so. I think there an identification number is something like a government-issued ID number.
An online identifier would have to identify you (e.g. my Hacker News username is probably identifiable).
The way I think of it is if someone who isn't authorised to know who I am can look in a system at the number and then go off and correlate that info to find me without further reference to other data in said system.
A database ID doesn't count, because you'd then need to look up something actually identifiable in the system to figure out who I am; neither does an opaque tracking number.
My social security number is identifiable; my email address may be identifiable; if I gave birth in region X to octuplets, then that probably is too.