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Subject: Fascinating analysis of census data
Found this over on Bruce Schneier's blog: Researchers have worked out that knowing only the block where your home and office are, you can be uniquely identified (PDF link).
That's really interesting, but not surprising: how many people work and live on the same blocks? What's fascinating to me is the proof of it all. The research suggests that the block-level data is all that's needed to uniquely identify you, and that your home and work postal (ZIP) code is enough to identify 5% of the population. That's a seriously coarse sampling but still quite useful.
There's quite a bit of analysis on 33 Bits of Entropy, covering the risk to anonymity when you consider the above research in combination with modern location-based technologies.
Very much an interesting read.
That's really interesting, but not surprising: how many people work and live on the same blocks? What's fascinating to me is the proof of it all. The research suggests that the block-level data is all that's needed to uniquely identify you, and that your home and work postal (ZIP) code is enough to identify 5% of the population. That's a seriously coarse sampling but still quite useful.
There's quite a bit of analysis on 33 Bits of Entropy, covering the risk to anonymity when you consider the above research in combination with modern location-based technologies.
Very much an interesting read.
![[Image: http://nfggames.com/system/arcade/special.php/b-d/bp-5/y-kof97/z-10/x-What?/.png]](http://nfggames.com/system/arcade/special.php/b-d/bp-5/y-kof97/z-10/x-What?/.png "http://nfggames.com/system/arcade/special.php/b-d/bp-5/y-kof97/z-10/x-What?/.png")