Walt Mossberg – For iPad and Mobile Devices, a “Port” out of the Norm
Mr. X lives in ZIP code 02138 and was born July 31, 1945.
These facts about him were included in an anonymized medical record released to the public. Sounds like Mr. X is pretty anonymous, right? Not if you’re Latanya Sweeney, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who showed in 1997 that this information was enough to pin down Mr. X’s more familiar identity–William Weld, the governor of Massachusetts throughout the 1990s.
This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”
We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions. Voices is edited by Beth Callaghan.
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