Security News > 2020 > June > Does a generalization of tracking data cover up our traces on the internet?

Many providers of tracking services advertise secure data protection by generalizing datasets and anonymizing data in this way.

Tracking services collect large amounts of data of internet users.

"As these data are highly sensitive and have a high personal reference, many companies use generalization to apparently anonymize them and to bypass data security regulations," says Professor Thorsten Strufe, Head of the "Practical IT Security" Research Group of KIT. By means of generalization, the level of detailing of the information is reduced, such that an identification of individuals is supposed to be impossible.

"Even if the domain, the allocation to a subject, such as politics or sports, and the time are stored on a daily basis only, 35 to 40 percent of the data can be assigned to individuals." For this scenario, the researchers found that generalization does not correspond to the definition of anonymity.

"Our results suggest that simple generalization is not suited for effectively anonymizing web tracking data. The data remain sharp to the person and anonymization is ineffective. To reach effective data protection, methods extending far beyond have to be applied, such as noise by the random insertion of minor misobservations into the data," Strufe recommends.

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