De-identification rules: 14
The rules of our de-identification standard, each with the law, standards and research it rests on, in their own words.
- As statedThe engine runs in your browser. Your original records, the list of people it builds and…Dated15 Oct 2026SourceNIST SP 800-188, De-Identifying Government Data Sets,…
- As statedIn tables, postcodes are cut to their first part (US ZIP codes to three digits, or 000…Dated15 Oct 2026SourceSweeney, Simple Demographics Often Identify People…
- As statedWe measure the engine on two public benchmarks and publish the result for the part of…Dated15 Oct 2026SourcePilán et al., TAB, Table 7 discussion; NIST SP 800-188,…
- As statedBefore a buyer receives anything, a de-identification provider you choose (not the…Dated5 Oct 2026SourceIn re Spirit Aviation Holdings, Consumer Privacy Ombudsman…
- As statedRecords about health, children, beliefs, sex life, union membership, ethnicity, crime,…DatedSep 2026SourceSpirit Airlines sale: association of flight attendants'…
- As statedEvery licence binds the buyer not to re-identify or try to, not to link the data with…Dated14 Aug 2026SourceCalifornia Civil Code 1798.140(m); In re Spirit Aviation…
- As statedA person counts as protected only when every mention of them is replaced. The engine…Dated7 Jul 2026SourcePilán et al., TAB, section 6.1; EDPB draft Guidelines…
- As statedEach run writes a report into the copy: the engine and dictionary versions, what was…Dated7 Jul 2026SourceHHS, Guidance on de-identification; EDPB draft Guidelines…
- As statedWe call data de-identified and state the measured risk and the threshold it met. We call…Dated7 Jul 2026SourceNIST SP 800-188, p. 51; EDPB draft Guidelines 02/2026 on…
- As statedRules read every record; a person reads a random sample of the rewritten ones. With…Dated28 Mar 2025SourceBranson et al., Trials 21:200; UK ICO, Anonymisation…
- As statedEach stand-in number comes from a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA-256) under a 256-bit key made on…DatedSep 2023SourceNIST SP 800-188, p. 51; HHS, Guidance on…
- As statedBy default a person keeps one stand-in within each file and gets another in the next, so…DatedSep 2023SourceLukas et al., Analyzing Leakage of Personally Identifiable…
- As statedEvery rewritten record is read a second time with no memory of the first pass, and the…DatedSep 2023SourceNIST SP 800-188, section 4.6.2
- As statedFour layers: the people your exports list in their own structure (senders, authors,…Dated1 Jul 2022SourceNIST IR 8053, De-Identification of Personal Information,…