Credit card users may be dismayed by findings MIT Researchers reported last week in the journal Science: Just a few pieces of vague non-identifying information, namely the dates and locations of four purchases, were enough to identify 90 percent of people in a data set of 1.1 million credit card users. When the researchers went to work with three pieces of less vague information, such as three receipts, there was a 94 percent chance of being able to extract the subject’s credit card records from a million other people.
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A Little Dab of Credit Card Data Can ID Customers
Posted by: Erika Morphy February 2, 2015 05:00 AMCredit card users may be dismayed by findings MIT Researchers reported last week in the journal Science: Just a few pieces of vague non-identifying information, namely the dates and locations of four purchases, were enough to identify 90 percent of people in a data set of 1.1 million credit card users. When the researchers went to work with three pieces of less vague information, such as three receipts, there was a 94 percent chance of being able to extract the subject’s credit card records from a million other people.