Comment on "Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata"

David Sánchez; Sergio Martínez; Josep Domingo-Ferrer

doi:10.1126/science.aad9295

Comment on "Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata"

Science. 2016 Mar 18;351(6279):1274. doi: 10.1126/science.aad9295.

Authors

David Sánchez¹, Sergio Martínez², Josep Domingo-Ferrer²

Affiliations

¹ United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair in Data Privacy, Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avenue Països Catalans, 26, E-43007, Tarragona, Catalonia. david.sanchez@urv.cat.
² United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair in Data Privacy, Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avenue Països Catalans, 26, E-43007, Tarragona, Catalonia.

PMID: 26989243
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad9295

Abstract

De Montjoye et al. (Reports, 30 January 2015, p. 536) claimed that most individuals can be reidentified from a deidentified transaction database and that anonymization mechanisms are not effective against reidentification. We demonstrate that anonymization can be performed by techniques well established in the literature.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Comment

MeSH terms

Commerce*
Data Collection*
Female
Humans
Information Dissemination*
Male
Privacy*