(no subject)

[dsrtao]

Quote from Schneier's Cryptogram

Other research reaches the same conclusion. Using public anonymous data from the 1990 census, Latanya Sweeney found that 87 percent of the population in the United States, 216 million of 248 million, could likely be uniquely identified by their five-digit ZIP code, combined with their gender and date of birth. About half of the U.S. population is likely identifiable by gender, date of birth and the city, town or municipality in which the person resides. Expanding the geographic scope to an entire county reduces that to a still-significant 18 percent. "In general," the researchers wrote, "few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person."

Stanford University researchers reported similar results using 2000 census data. It turns out that date of birth, which (unlike birthday month and day alone) sorts people into thousands of different buckets, is incredibly valuable in disambiguating people.

Today is a good day to set your LJ birthday to 1970.

Comments

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

This makes me feel better about neither listing my birthday nor my location publicly in my LJ profile.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I have a false date I use, which is somewhat near my birthday.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

And somehow the Jury Commissioner's office of the Circuit Court here cannot figure out that D G ARTHUR JR and DONALD G ARTHUR JR residing at the same address are only one person, and that the documentation of permanent disability from my doctor applies to both of me. (I was told they bought data from two different sources and merged the lists. I imagine birthdate has to be included so they'd not accidentally summon six year olds for jury duty.)

Apparently my left half still has to serve jury duty but my right half doesn't. Or something.

(And the irony there is that since it's a stamina/fatigue problem -- that's what's going to spike the pain and the difficulty concentrating after a few hours -- I could and would gladly do my civic duty if they could assign me half-days -- two half-days instead of one full day. But they can't do that.)