Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/455017
BySethBorensteinand Jack Gillum The Associated Press WASHINGTON Credit card data isn't quite as anony- mous as promised, a new study says. Scientists showed they can identify you with more than 90 percent accuracy by looking at just four pur- chases, three if the price is included — and this is after companies "anony- mized" the transaction re- cords, saying they wiped away names and other per- sonal details. The study out of MIT, published Thursday in the journal Science, ex- amined three months of credit card records for 1.1 million people. "We are showing that the privacy we are told that we have isn't real," study co-au- thor Alex "Sandy" Pentland of the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology, said in an email. Companies routinely strip away personal identi- fiers from credit card data when they share informa- tion with outsiders, saying the data is now safe because it is "anonymized." But the MIT researchers showed that anonymized isn't quite the same as anonymous. Drawing upon a sea of data in an unnamed devel- oped country, the research- ers pieced together avail- able information to see how easily they could iden- tify somebody. They looked at information from 10,000 shops, with each data piece time-stamped to calculate how many pieces of data it would take on average to find somebody, said study lead author Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, also of MIT. In this case the experts needed only four pieces, three if price is involved. As an example, the re- searchers wrote about look- ing at data from September 23 and 24 and who went to a bakery one day and a res- taurant the other. Search- ing through the data set, they found there could be only person who fits the bill — they called him Scott. The study said, "and we now know all of his other transactions, such as the fact that he went shopping for shoes and groceries on 23 September, and how much he spent." It's easier to identify women, but the research couldn't explain why, de Montjoye said. The study shows that when we think we have pri- vacy when our data is col- lected, it's really just an "il- lusion," said Eugene Spaf- ford, director of Purdue University's Center for Ed- ucation and Research in In- formation Assurance and Security. Spafford, who wasn't part of the study, said it makes "one wonder what our expectation of pri- vacy should be anymore." "It is not surprising to those of us who spend our time doing privacy re- search," said outside expert Lorrie Faith Cranor, direc- tor of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab- oratory at Carnegie Mellon University. "But I expect it would be surprising to most people, including compa- nies who may be routinely releasing de-identified transaction data, thinking it is safe to do so." Credit card companies and industry officials ei- ther declined comment or did not respond to requests for comment. The once-obscure con- cept of metadata — or basic transactional information — grew mainstream in recent years following revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Those disclosures from once-top secret U.S. government documents re- vealed that the NSA was col- lecting the records of digital communications from mil- lions of Americans not sus- pected of a crime. The use of so-called "big data" has been a lucrative prospect for private compa- nies aiming to cash in on the trove of personal infor- mation about their consum- ers. Retail purchases, on- line web browsing activity and a host of other digital breadcrumbs can provide firms with a wealth of data about you — which is then used in sophisticated adver- tising and marketing cam- paigns. And big data-min- ing was used extensively in the 2012 president election to win over voters or seek out prospective donors. "While government sur- veillance has been getting a lot of press, and certainly the revelations warrant such scrutiny, a large num- ber of corporations have been quietly expanding their use of data," said pri- vacy consultant and author Rebecca Herold. Studies like this show "how meta- data can be used to pin- point specific individuals. This also raises the ques- tion of how such data would be used within insurance actuarial calculations, in- surance claims and adjust- ments, loan and mortgage application considerations, divorce proceedings." PRIVACY 'A no ny mi ze d' c re di t car d da ta not so anonymous, study shows RICHARDDREW—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE A Visa credit card is offered at a store in New York's Times Square. By Joan Lowy The Associated Press WASHINGTON Thechances of a driver dying in a crash in a late-model car or light truck fell by more than a third over three years, and nine car models had zero deaths per million regis- tered vehicles, according to a study by the Insurance In- stitute for Highway Safety. Improved vehicle de- signs and safety technol- ogy have a lot to do with the reduced risk, but a weak economy that led to reduc- tions in driving may also have played a role, the in- stitute said. The study, which ex- amined fatalities involv- ing 2011 model year vehi- cles, looked at how many driver fatalities occurred in a particular model over the course of a year of opera- tion, expressed as a rate per million registered vehicle years. It found there was an average of 28 driver deaths per million registered vehi- cle years through the 2012 calendar year, down from 48 deaths for 2008 models through 2009. When the institute looked at the issue eight years ago, there were no models with driver death rates of zero. David Zuby, the insti- tute's chief research officer, called it "a huge improve- ment," even considering the effect of a weak econ- omy. "We know from our vehicle ratings program that crash test performance has been getting steadily better. These latest death rates provide new confir- mation that real-world out- comes are improving too." Among the improve- ments credited for declin- ing death rates is the wide- spread adoption of elec- tronic stability control, which has dramatically lessened the risk of rollover crashes. SUVs had some of the highest rates a decade ago due to their propensity to roll over. The rollover death rate of 5 per million registered vehicle years for 2011 mod- els is less than a quarter of what it was for 2004 mod- els, and six of the nine vehi- cles with zero deaths were SUVs. Side air bags and struc- tural changes to vehicles are also helping. Automak- ers are engineering vehi- cles with stronger occupant compartments that hold up better in front, side and rollover crashes, allowing the seatbelts and air bags to do their jobs well, said Russ Rader, an institute spokesman. Improved technologies were responsible for sav- ing 7,700 driver lives in 2012 whencompared tohow cars were made in 1985, the in- stitute said. But the gap between saf- est and riskiest models re- mains wide. Three 2011 models had rates exceed- ing 100 deaths per million registered vehicle years. The riskiest models were mostly lower-priced small cars, while the safest mod- els were all mid-sized or large vehicles. The nine models with zero deaths were: Audi A4 four-wheeldrive,amidsized luxury car; Honda Odys- sey, a minivan; Kia Sorento two-wheeldrive,amid-sized SUV;theLexusRX350four- wheel drive, a midsized lux- ury SUV; Mercedes-Benz GL-Classfour-wheeldrive,a luxury SUV; Subaru Legacy four-wheel drive, a 4-door midsized car; Toyota High- lander hybrid, a four-wheel drive midsized SUV; Toyota Sequoia, a four-wheel drive SUV,andVolvoXC90,afour- wheel drive midsized SUV. The vehicles with the highest death rates were the Kia Rio, a 4-door mini car, 149 deaths per million registered vehicles; Nissan Versa, a small 4-door sedan, 130 deaths, and Hyundai Accent, a 4-door mini car, 120 deaths. AUTOMOBILE SAFETY Ad va nc es lo we r cha nc e drivers will die in crash Please help sponsor a classroom subscription Call Kathy at (530) 737-5047 to find out how. 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