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Governance, Risk, Audit & Privacy · Advanced

Re-identification

Linking de-identified or anonymized data back to specific individuals, often by combining datasets.

Definition

Re-identification attacks exploit quasi-identifiers such as ZIP code, birth date, and gender, which together can uniquely identify a large share of the US population. Famous cases include the Netflix Prize and AOL search data. Re-identification risk assessments evaluate the likelihood of such linkage.

Example

Researchers match an anonymized ride-share dataset with public social media posts to identify riders.

Exam tip

Quasi-identifiers are the main re-identification threat even after direct identifiers are removed.

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