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De-identification


De-identification is the process used to prevent a person’s identity from being connected with information. Common uses of de-identification include human subject research for the sake of privacy for research participants. Common strategies for de-identifying datasets include deleting or masking personal identifiers, such as name and social security number, and suppressing or generalizing quasi-identifiers, such as date of birth and zip code. The reverse process of defeating de-identification to identify individuals is known as re-identification. Several successful re-identifications attempts have purported to doubt on the effectiveness of de-identification in protecting individuals' privacy. A systematic review of the evidence found that published re-identification attacks were performed on data sets that were not de-identified properly (using recognized standards).

The United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and others have recently deemed de-identification "somewhat useful as an added safeguard" but not "a useful basis for policy" as "it is not robust against near‐term future re‐identification methods".

A survey is conducted, such as a census, to collect information about a group of people. To encourage participation and to protect the privacy of survey respondents, the researchers attempt to design the survey in such a way that people can participate in the survey and when the result is published it will not be possible to match any participant's individual response with any data published in the result.

Anonymization refers to irreversibly severing a data set from the identity of the data contributor in a study to prevent any future re-identification, even by the study organizers under any condition. De-identification is also a severing of a data set from the identity of the data contributor, but may include preserving identifying information which could only be re-linked by a trusted party in certain situations. There is a debate in the technology community of whether data that can be re-linked, even by a trusted party, should ever be considered de-identified.


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