Rohan Seth quoted in the Deccan Chronicle on the issue of whether anonymised data can be used to identify people

Deccan Chronicle quoted Rohan Seth on the issue of using anonymised data to identify people.According to Rohan Seth, policy analyst (technology) at The Takshashila Institution, “When we read the term anonymised data, we tend to believe that it cannot be used to identify people or whole communities. In a sense, we imagine the anonymisation to be irreversible, even though that assumption has long been debunked.”“Think about it this way. If a malicious hacker has access to data from your Google Maps and a list of your UPI transactions, s/he does not necessarily need your name to identify you. Anonymised data sets are like puzzle pieces. If you combine enough of them, you could reverse the anonymisation process and identify the people it represents.”Rohan is a policy analyst (technology) at The Takshashila Institution. Views are personal.