Videos

User Data: The End of Anonymity, the Beginning of Privacy

Presenter
May 9, 2012
Keywords:
  • Measures of information
MSC:
  • 94A17
Abstract
"We do not collect personally identifiable information"... "This dataset have been de-identified prior to release"... From advertisers tracking Web clicks to biomedical researchers sharing clinical records, anonymization is the main privacy protection mechanism used for sensitive user data today. I will argue that the distinction between "personally identifiable" and "non-personally identifiable" information is fallacious by showing how to infer private information from fully anonymized data in three settings: (1) records of individual transactions and preferences, illustrated by the Netflix Prize dataset, (2) social networks, and (3) recommender systems, where temporal changes in aggregate statistics allow accurate inference of hidden individual transactions. I will then outline a program for data privacy research. It includes several challenging problems in the design and implementation of privacy-preserving systems, domain-specific algorithmic research, as well as policy and economic issues.