privacy

We Know You… I’m going to play back two attempts at hyper-personalisation that have actually happened over the last 5 years - the names of the companies involved have been removed to protect embarrassment (and lawsuits). If you’re not sure what hyper-personalisation is please sit in the unknown for a few more paragraphs - we’ll get to that. Story 1: Beverage Company I’ve popped out for the weekend to get some shopping in for my other-half’s upcoming birthday - I know what I want to get, I’m an efficient shopper, so I walk in with a purpose and head to a particular store....

Your data has been de-identified. You are anonymous. We have pseudonymised your information. Your private data is masked. The Personally Identifiable Information (PII) has been scrubbed. What if I told you there’s a good chance none of that matters? A research paper from Carnegie Mellon University back in the year 2000 showed that: 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States [were uniquely identifiable] based only on [postcode], gender and date of birth....