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Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:02:59 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> Date: September 22, 2009 8:46:00 AM EDTTo: Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>, Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org >, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder
(via BoingBoing)Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/netflixs-impending-still-avoidable-multi-million-dollar-privacy-blunder Excerpt: Netflix should cancel this new, irresponsible contest, which it has dubbed Netflix Prize 2. Researchers have known for more than a decade that gender plus ZIP code plus birthdate uniquely identifies a significant percentage of Americans (87% according to Latanya Sweeney's famous study.) True, Netflix plans to release age not birthdate, but simple arithmetic shows that for many people in the country, gender plus ZIP code plus age will narrow their private movie preferences down to at most a few hundred people. Netflix needs to understand the concept of "information entropy": even if it is not revealing information tied to a single person, it is revealing information tied to so few that we should consider this a privacy breach. I have no doubt that researchers will be able to use the techniques of Narayanan and Shmatikov, together with databases revealing sex, zip code, and age, to tie many people directly to these supposedly anonymized new records. Because of this, if it releases the data, Netflix might be breaking the law. ---Rsk ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder David Farber (Sep 22)