Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amounts’ of location data

Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by ProjectArcturis on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @06:25PM (#31588920)

There's no way to anonymize location data. Where does your phone spend the night plus where does your phone spend the weekday equals a unique identifier when cross-referenced with an address database.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by Cd00d on Thursday June 02, 2022 @12:29PM (#31596972)

That's a fair point, and I'm guessing why my previous comment is being downvoted.

I know our location provider did some things proactively - like they would not geofence hospitals, for example, but "home" is likely very visible.

That's a dataset I didn't work on as much, so maybe I'm not being sensitive enough to the "this should be illegal" argument. I guess on reflection misleading you for the collection should be illegal, though how to do that isn't obvious.

What I've worked on the most is people's credit card transaction histories, and that's quite a bit more naturally anonymous, though again, if you know enough about a person they would be discoverable.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by burnished on Thursday June 02, 2022 @02:12AM (#31591939)

Bin it until its anonymous again. Your route is too identifying, but is "people who appear to be driving away from a residential location between 9:30 and 10"? Fun to think about.

[ Parent | on HN ]