[Infowarrior] - Fwd: Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar Privacy Blunder

[Richard Forno]

(via BoingBoing)

	
	Netflix's Impending (But Still Avoidable) Multi-Million Dollar  
Privacy Blunder
	http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/netflixs-impending-still-avoidable-multi-million-dollar-privacy-blunder

Excerpt:

	Netflix should cancel this new, irresponsible contest, which
	it has dubbed Netflix Prize 2. Researchers have known for more
	than a decade that gender plus ZIP code plus birthdate uniquely
	identifies a significant percentage of Americans (87% according
	to Latanya Sweeney's famous study.) True, Netflix plans to
	release age not birthdate, but simple arithmetic shows that
	for many people in the country, gender plus ZIP code plus age
	will narrow their private movie preferences down to at most a
	few hundred people. Netflix needs to understand the concept of
	"information entropy": even if it is not revealing information
	tied to a single person, it is revealing information tied to so
	few that we should consider this a privacy breach.