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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Shopper Anonymity not Possible

In Retailwire:  Good piece on how little information it takes to reveal an account.    

" ... A new study led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even with names and account numbers deleted from credit cards, just four other pieces of information were enough to re-identify 90 percent of the individual shoppers.

The researchers analyzed transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over three months. Although the information had been "anonymized" by removing names and account numbers, each purchase made by the same credit card was tagged with the same random identification number.... " 

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