Industry Insights

In our blog we provide you with industry insights on privacy, anonymization, analytics and of course information about our solution Aircloak Insights.

Category: Privacy



August 11, 2020 by Paul Francis

Diffix and the Fundamental Law of Information Recovery

A frequent assumption among privacy professionals is that any data anonymization system that allows unlimited queries leads to serious privacy loss. This article debunks that assumption with a simple example derived from the seminal 2003 paper of Dinur and Nissim. We give examples of how Diffix achieves strong anonymity and good utility with unlimited queries (and no budget), and suggest … read more


June 24, 2020 by Paul Francis

The five private eyes, Part 1: The surprising strength of de-identified data

  Try googling for the phrase “anonymization is impossible”. You’ll get plenty of hits. The idea that anonymization is impossible, or at least very very hard, is widespread. Another widely held belief is that Differential Privacy, with its mathematical guarantee of privacy, is the only way to reliably anonymize data. In stark contrast to these beliefs is the simple fact … read more


May 27, 2020 by Felix Bauer

The World’s Only Anonymization Bug Bounty – Round Two!

Aircloak is pleased to announce the data anonymization bounty program for Diffix Dogwood, the anonymization technology at the core of Aircloak Insights. The MPI-SWS/Diffix Bounty 2020 program is sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Aircloak’s research partner. The total purse is $30,000, and top prize is $10,000. The bounty program uses the General Data Anonymization measurement … read more


April 20, 2020 by Paul Francis

Tracking Covid-19 privately: Let’s at least use the tools we have

National Data Protection Authorities need to pave the way for private Covid-19 data sharing between companies and governments. This article proposes a rapid GDPR anonymization certification so that companies can quickly use existing commercial anonymization technologies for sharing Covid-19 data without legal risk. Data is a key tool in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. Decision makers need data to understand the … read more


November 26, 2019 by Nicolas Sartor

7 Questions on Privacy and Data Anonymization [Survey Results]

Interestingly enough, despite being a heavily discussed topic, surveys on privacy and data anonymization are still pretty rare. In September of this year, we were invited to participate at an event from Digitalstrategie.NRW (an initiative on digitization, coined by the Ministry of Economic Affairs from North Rhine-Westphalia) with a talk on data anonymization. What made this event unique is that … read more


November 21, 2019 by Nicolas Sartor

A Visual Comparison for Privacy Approaches in Data Analytics

In the field of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (or PrivTech), one truth is becoming increasingly apparent: there is no silver bullet in privacy approaches. Each data use case has to be considered separately. Typical requirements we discuss with customers are What analytical quality is needed? Is time to market for each use case a factor? What privacy protection is needed or … read more


September 23, 2019 by Nicolas Sartor

A Brief History of Data Anonymization

“’Anonymized’ Data Can Be Anything But’” – Forbes, July 24, 2019 When the world media reported the results of a recent scientific paper on the ineffectiveness of data anonymization, it was anything but news. Already in 1981 the US computer scientist, Dorothy E. Denning, stated in one of her scientific papers on database security that when working with data it … read more