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""Anonymised" data lies at the core of everything from modern medical research to personalised recommendations and modern AI techniques. Unfortunately, according to a paper, successfully anonymising data is practically impossible for any complex dataset."

"A draft government memo explaining how the NHS contact-tracing app could stem the spread of the coronavirus said ministers might be given the ability to order "de-anonymisation" to identify people from their smartphones, the Guardian can reveal. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced on Sunday that the UK planned to introduce an app that would enable people who developed Covid-19 symptoms to "anonymously" alert other users to whom they had been in close proximity. "All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research," he said."

"Anonymised Facebook data on people's travels could be used to identify the spread of Covid-19 in locations where health officials are not yet aware of it, a new Australian study has found. Published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on Wednesday, University of Melbourne researchers analysed anonymised population mobility data provided by Facebook as part of its Data for Good program to determine whether it could be a useful predictor in determining the spread of Covid outbreaks based on where people were travelling."

""This is all identifiable in the smart meter data - it has literally your entire the pattern of life and behaviour through just monitoring where you live and what you do in your home." Vector and AWS say the data is anonymised and cannot be linked back to customers. Privacy advocates dispute that, because the way some customers use power in certain locations will easily identify them. For the companies, it's a tightrope: the more anonymous the data is made, the less value it has overall."

"ne of the creepiest - and most useful - Google inventions has been its ability to predict traffic jams by using anonymised ping-backs from mobile phones to tell how fast everyone is moving."

"MafiaLeaks uses the encrypted anonymising browser Tor to enable informants to securely share their secrets with the site. Currently, the recipients are limited by MafiaLeaks to the Fatto Quotidiano newspaper, the Sicilian TV station Telejato and Antonella Beccaria, an independent investigative journalist. All are known for their anti-mafia activities."

"The most well-documented of these deals with the hash function used to "anonymize" the license and medallion numbers. A bit of lateral thinking from one civic hacker and the data was completely de-anonymized. This data can now be used to calculate, for example, any driver's annual income. More disquieting, though, in my opinion, is the privacy risk to passengers. With only a small amount of auxiliary knowledge, using this dataset an attacker could identify where an individual went, how much they paid, weekly habits, etc. I will demonstrate how easy this is to do in the following section."