From the article: ”aggregate users' data without revealing their identities.”

DennisP 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Also from the article:

> Uber Intelligence will let advertisers securely combine their customer data with Uber's to help surface insights about their audiences, based on what they eat and where they travel.

So the companies have the identities. It sounds like they're going to be learning something about their customers, the question is just how much detail they'll get.

	▲	zx8080 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Everything? Ok, everything. Names "anonymmized" (but easily trackable) and the list of addresses. Why not sell it to get money? /s

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malshe 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's how it starts

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kotaKat 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Over/under on when someone is able to de-aggregate an identity down to an individual user?

I’ve got it on less than 6 months.

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code_for_monkey 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

6 weeks would be optimistic

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schnable 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

how do de-aggregation attacks or whatever you'd call this work?

	▲	snapcaster 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One of the easiest methods is to find a different data source with overlap and use that to map real people to anonymized lists. Big tech companies find this super easy to do because of all the internal data they already have on everyone

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indymike 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

More like 15 minutes.

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squigz 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why do you think this makes it better?

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crazygringo 21 hours ago | parent [-]

You think data tied to individual users isn't any worse? That privacy has no value?

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pavel_lishin 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think they're suggesting that anonymized and potentially aggregated data can still have individual data extracted from it: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/27/new-york-...

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squigz 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What the heck? Where did I say either of those things?

Privacy is very important. That's why I think sharing of customer data - individual or aggregate - is bad.

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crazygringo 20 hours ago | parent [-]

You asked why someone would think aggregating would make it better.

Aggregating protects privacy when done properly.

It seems pretty obvious to me that sharing individual data is orders of magnitude worse than sharing aggregated data.

If you think they're the same, then you don't seem to value the privacy that aggregation provides.

So what am I misrepresenting about what you said?

I'm tired of false equivalences. One thing that's maybe slightly bad, and another thing that's super-super-bad, aren't equally bad.

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pixl97 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Aggregating protects privacy when done properly.

When done properly is going a lot of heavy lifting there. Time and time again it's been found most aggregates are not filtered properly and be deanonymized with eaze.

It's not that one is big bad, and one is little bad, it's the little bad can become big bad with a small amount of work by an attacker/company. Then when you add in zero external third party verification of these company claims, you really don't have any reason to believe them.

	▲	crazygringo 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> When done properly is going a lot of heavy lifting there. Not really. There are common practices for it. Yes it hits HN when deanonymization can happen at a well-known company, just like it hits HN when there's a security vulnerability that gets patched at a well-known company. But "it's the little bad can become big bad" is what's doing the heavy lifting in your argument. No, that's not how it works. There's no universe in which aggregate data can be deanonymized to anywhere close to what all of the individual profiles would be. It's a completely false equivalenace, period.

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squigz 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And I'm tired of people acting like companies putting on a show of protecting our privacy is doing anything actually helpful. But you're right. I'm wrong and clearly don't care about privacy.

As a completely unrelated aside, I wonder how much social progress is hindered by people alienating people on their own side.

	▲	crazygringo 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just don't make false equivalences. It's easy, just admit the two are not the same and move on. You don't need to get defensive about it. "I wonder" how much social progress is hindered by people making wrong statements and then getting defensive about it? Or by making snarky "completely unrelated" asides?

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baggachipz 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Source: "trust us bro"