Comments on: AOL, Netflix and the end of open access to research data

First the AOL search logs last year, and now the Netflix database. With these two incidents, it is highly unlikely that any company will ever again share data with researchers.

[jewforjesus]

Researchers announced this week that they were able to de-anonymize the data, by comparing the Netflix data against publicly available ratings on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Whoops.

No they didn't. They matched newly released anonymous information to PUBLICLY AVAILABLE movie ratings attached only to a pseudonym. Whoop-de-doo. Nothing at all was learned here.

[jewforjesus]

To clarify, this is what happened:

1. Someone submits public ratings of over 100 movies on a website.
2. Netflix makes available a list of over 100 movies.
3. The list is linked to the public ratings.

Was any privacy lost? NO! We have learned NOTHING. We already KNEW the guy saw these movies because he RATED THEM ON A PUBLIC WEBSITE.

[DBA687]

Privacy is lost.

1. Someone submits public ratings of over 100 movies on a website.
2. Netflix makes available a list of over 250 movies.
3. The list is linked to the public ratings.

The user has lost the privacy in regards to the 150 movies in the Netflix data but not on the public reviews website. Some real reviewer names are know for public movie review sites and it's a real loss of privacy for those people.

[dpeelmd]

This story shows that seemingly harmless anonymized commercial information can be easily re-identified to build very damaging political, sexual, and even psychological profiles of Netflix users. Netflix released over 100 million movie ratings made by 500,000 subscribers.

What if your future employer used data from Netflix and other sources to create not just a voting and sexual profile, but a profile of your risk for expensive diseases?

Narayanan and Shmatikov showed us what they learned about one Netflix user: ?First, we can immediately find his political orientation based on his strong opinions about ?Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times? and ?Fahrenheit 9/11.? Strong guesses about his religious views can be made based on his ratings on ?Jesus of Nazareth? and ?The Gospel of John?. He did not like ?Super Size Me? at all; perhaps this implies something about his physical size? Both items that we found with predominantly gay themes, ?Bent? and ?Queer as folk? were rated one star out of five. He is a cultish follower of ?Mystery Science Theater 3000?. This is far from all we found about this one person, but having made our point, we will spare the reader further lurid details.?

What does Narayanan and Shmatikov?s re-identification research mean for the nation?s treasure trove of health data? Anonymized or de-identified health records are clearly not safe either. Electronic health records contain far more details than Netflix movie ratings, making them even easier to re-identify.

Today Americans have no control over ANY electronic prescription, genetic, or health records. Employers, insurers, banks, and schools can all data mine our health records without consent.

The health data mining industry is huge and extremely lucrative. Two examples:

1) BCBS?s Blue Health Initiative sells data on all 79 million enrollees to help large employers lower costs.

2) IMS Health, a prescription data miner, reported revenues of $1.75 Billion dollars in 2005 selling supposedly de-identified prescription records.

Tell Congress to restore your right to control your personal health information. A good place to start is to end prescription data mining. Sign our petition now at: www.patientprivacyrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Prescription_Privacy_Video

Only Congress can restore our privacy rights in the Digital Age. Americans should have the right to control access to personal health records and the right to control access to electronic financial and commercial information too?including control access to our Netflix movie ratings.

Why should Netflix be able to reveal anyone's movie ratings for any reason without consent?

Deborah C. Peel, MD
www.patientprivacyrights.org

[randomwalker]

There's is much misconception going around about our paper on the Netflix prize dataset, which is why we have released an FAQ about our de-anonymization algorithm and results

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/netflix-faq.html

Also, note that this work is about a year old -- we released the first version of the paper just two weeks after the data was released; it seems to have somehow hit the media recently.

--Arvind Narayanan

[FO-FI_FO_454]

SUBJECT: 2 Movies - "ALL THE KINGS MEN" and "THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING" - by the B-d Light FROGS, let's give them names, "Louie and Benny."

Was tuned into the big game last night, with a leading Satellite Radio provider, Patriots 27 Ravens 24, 14 seconds to go - surrounded by AM/FM back-up, CB Radio back-up, Desktop Shortwave back-up (for my grunting and grumbling contacts in the UK), FREE TV on for news alerts, wireless device tuned into my son's number 3,000 miles away, 14 seonds to go for a final, and guess what? The Satellite Radio link simply vanished - NADA - went away - NOTHING.

Had to get down on that game last night, so I contacted "Nathan Detroit" of Guys and Dolls fame - he sent over "Nicely Nicely" of the same gig, and we pashionately were awaiting the finaly outcome - NOTHING - with a clear view of the sky, all areas of the compass - gone - nothing. I thought it was a flock of birds - NOPE - the signal just vanished.

"Nicely Nicely" said "It's a trick - somebody is trying to fix the game and prevent the world from knowing the outcome." I looked at him and laughed, and said "It's probably a Patriots ACT (pun intended) test to see if all communications in a given area can be shut down. I walked 4 feet to my front door, looked up upon a clear sky and then tried to make a few porfane gestures at an invisible satellite - couldn't see any, but, it COULD SEE ME. Just to make sure this never happens again, I wrote my name on a sheet of bond paper alongwith my social security number and nailed it to the front of my door. After all, I've got nothing to hide from Big Brother. Then, I performed a GOOGLE EARTH SEARCH for my address and lo' and behold, I was ON TOP OF MY BUILDING ON THE INTERNET - however, I couldn't see the sign I had just nailed to the front door.

"Nicely Nicely" left, I was alone, then watched a rerun of Gene Hackman in the flick "The Conversation" - interesting movie, deals with Big Brother long before the Patriot ACT. If you haven't seen it buy or rent it - well worthwhile.

I looked around my pad, saw all of this electronic and computer equipement, then popped open a new CD in which there was a security monitoring strip, you know, about 2 inches by 1/4 inch, self adhesive, magnetic tape inside which blows the whistle on you in case you want to be nailed as a THIEF.

I took this security strip in my hand and tried to imagine how many different places it could be installed if indeed Big Brother was monitoring me and I laughed, I had thought of something very wierd. I wanted to inset it into a body cavity but, I was out of jelly.

This is what I imagined, 2 FROGS, Louie and Benny, stretched out on deck chairs somewhere living LARGE, smoking stogies, not a care in the world, and then a conversation begins:
CHARADE
Louie: Benny, wake up, WAKE UP, see the headlines.
Benny: What time is it - what do you want?
Louie: Did you hear about the Data Discs lost in England?
Benny: Yeah, that's peanuts.
Louie: Did we have anything to do with that?
Benny: NO - that's peanuts...TOLD YOU - PEANUTS!
Louie: Pass over a Bud - thanks.
Benny: Louie, after next week, we're going to be KINGS OF THE WORLD - told you, it's all going to happen as planned.
Louie: What's left to uplink?
Benny: Australia and New Zealand, then, we're done.
Louie: Are our demands still the same Benny - are we asking for too much, after all, it's just the 2 of us.
Benny: Louie - next week, when we pull the plug, nobody is going to be able to speak anything other than FROG - we will shut down all communcations, worldwide, all data input, and output, and then, the rest of the world will understand how important it is not to put all of their eggs into one basket.
END OF CHARADE

CROAK, CROAK, CROAK - thank you for this opportunity to CROAK BACK - the FROGS.