Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> 33 bits of entropy

For the clueless (including myself--I just looked this up), if doing a brute-force search to identify or reidentify someone using "anonymized" data (which is what this poster is referring to), it only takes 2^33 attempts, or 8,589,934,592 attempts (on a bit scale--binary--0 or 1), to exhaust all other possibilities (such as other people--when reidentifying people via health data that was "anonymized"), when tracing to find a person via data in general.

Obviously some data is more sensitive than others, but that has little relevance: it requires nearly no data (especially in terms of what is being hoarded about each and every one of us) and virtually no effort or computing power, to be found.

This also means that even the most mundane (and always sensitive, too--although some data is more sensitive!) data that has been hoarded about you will be used against you, in ways you would have never imagined. It will be used for processing and inferences (which you are unaware of) will be made on you.

You are already probably part of several unhealthy social experiments that you are unaware of, via correlations from mundane data, using things that are pervasive such as AI.




Consider applying for YC's W25 batch! Applications are open till Nov 12.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: