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2006
ACM

Revisiting the uniqueness of simple demographics in the US population

13 years 9 months ago
Revisiting the uniqueness of simple demographics in the US population
According to a famous study [10] of the 1990 census data, 87% of the US population can be uniquely identified by gender, ZIP code and full date of birth. This short paper revisits the uniqueness of simple demographics in the US population based on the most recent census data (the 2000 census). We offer a detailed, comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the threat to privacy posed by the disclosure of simple demographic information. Our results generally agree with the findings of [10], although we find that disclosing one’s gender, ZIP code and full date of birth allows for unique identification of fewer individuals (63% of the US population) than reported in [10]. We hope that our study will be a useful reference for privacy researchers who need simple estimates of the comparative threat of disclosing various demographic data. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.4.1 [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues— Privacy General Terms Measurement Keywords Privacy, Anonymity...
Philippe Golle
Added 14 Jun 2010
Updated 14 Jun 2010
Type Conference
Year 2006
Where WPES
Authors Philippe Golle
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