Lmao, I remember 15 years ago reading articles about how it only takes something like 15 or 25 pieces of information to identify someone. Stuff like, what music they like, what games they play, etc. People are that unique that in a world with billions of internet citizens, just a relative few pieces of information can identify you.
As of early 2026, an estimated 6 billion to 6.04 billion people use the internet globally, representing approximately 73%–74% of the world's population. Internet usage has grown significantly, with around 294 million new users added in the past 12 months. Despite this, about 2.2 billion people remain offline.
This article claims that only 4 pieces of information are enough to identify 90% of people.
Even when real names and other personal information are stripped from big data sets, it is often possible to use just a few pieces of the information to identify a specific person, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
In the study, titled “Unique in the Shopping Mall: On the Reidentifiability of Credit Card Metadata,” a group of data scientists analyzed credit card transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. The data set contained details including the date of each transaction, amount charged and name of the store.
Although the information had been “anonymized” by removing personal details like names and account numbers, the uniqueness of people’s behavior made it easy to single them out.
In fact, knowing just four random pieces of information was enough to reidentify 90 percent of the shoppers as unique individuals and to uncover their records, researchers calculated. And that uniqueness of behavior — or “unicity,” as the researchers termed it — combined with publicly available information, like Instagram or Twitter posts, could make it possible to reidentify people’s records by name.
This is why I try to say things like "my spouse" and not my wife, etc. This site uses taboola ads (scored.co), so posts are being analyzed/catalogued that way.
But yeah, cant be to many retards like me, who believe aliens created humans, and was dumb enough to get poisoned with refrigerant/refrigerant oils. I think the doctor ive been seeing might end up moving away ( i just have a feeling ), and at that point Im not sure what I will do.
I really dont wanna plaster my face on a article somewhere, but if signing up for maid and going to a reporter and telling my story is what it would take to get some fucking help, then I should.
But to OP's original point, yeah we should all be worried about the surveillance state being built around ai.
Lmao, I remember 15 years ago reading articles about how it only takes something like 15 or 25 pieces of information to identify someone. Stuff like, what music they like, what games they play, etc. People are that unique that in a world with billions of internet citizens, just a relative few pieces of information can identify you.
This article claims that only 4 pieces of information are enough to identify 90% of people.
Even when real names and other personal information are stripped from big data sets, it is often possible to use just a few pieces of the information to identify a specific person, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
In the study, titled “Unique in the Shopping Mall: On the Reidentifiability of Credit Card Metadata,” a group of data scientists analyzed credit card transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. The data set contained details including the date of each transaction, amount charged and name of the store.
Although the information had been “anonymized” by removing personal details like names and account numbers, the uniqueness of people’s behavior made it easy to single them out.
In fact, knowing just four random pieces of information was enough to reidentify 90 percent of the shoppers as unique individuals and to uncover their records, researchers calculated. And that uniqueness of behavior — or “unicity,” as the researchers termed it — combined with publicly available information, like Instagram or Twitter posts, could make it possible to reidentify people’s records by name.
This is why I try to say things like "my spouse" and not my wife, etc. This site uses taboola ads (scored.co), so posts are being analyzed/catalogued that way.
But yeah, cant be to many retards like me, who believe aliens created humans, and was dumb enough to get poisoned with refrigerant/refrigerant oils. I think the doctor ive been seeing might end up moving away ( i just have a feeling ), and at that point Im not sure what I will do.
I really dont wanna plaster my face on a article somewhere, but if signing up for maid and going to a reporter and telling my story is what it would take to get some fucking help, then I should.
But to OP's original point, yeah we should all be worried about the surveillance state being built around ai.
Lmao, I remember 15 years ago reading articles about how it only takes something like 15 or 25 pieces of information to identify someone. Stuff like, what music they like, what games they play, etc. People are that unique that in a world with billions of internet citizens, just a relative few pieces of information can identify you.
This article claims that only 4 pieces of information are enough to identify 90% of people.
Even when real names and other personal information are stripped from big data sets, it is often possible to use just a few pieces of the information to identify a specific person, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.
In the study, titled “Unique in the Shopping Mall: On the Reidentifiability of Credit Card Metadata,” a group of data scientists analyzed credit card transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. The data set contained details including the date of each transaction, amount charged and name of the store.
Although the information had been “anonymized” by removing personal details like names and account numbers, the uniqueness of people’s behavior made it easy to single them out.
In fact, knowing just four random pieces of information was enough to reidentify 90 percent of the shoppers as unique individuals and to uncover their records, researchers calculated. And that uniqueness of behavior — or “unicity,” as the researchers termed it — combined with publicly available information, like Instagram or Twitter posts, could make it possible to reidentify people’s records by name.
This is why I try to say things like "my spouse" and not my wife, etc. This site uses taboola ads (scored.co), so posts are being analyzed/catalogued that way.
But yeah, cant be to many retards like me, who believe aliens created humans, and was dumb enough to get poisoned with refrigerant/refrigerant oils. I think the doctor ive been seeing might end up moving away ( i just have a feeling ), and at that point Im not sure what I will do.
I really dont wanna plaster my face on a article somewhere, but if going to a reporter and telling my story is what it would take to get some fucking help, then I should.
But to OP's original point, yeah we should all be worried about the surveillance state being built around ai.