Data owners understand that personal information needs to be treated with due diligence for ethical reasons or legal reasons, such as:
protecting confidential sensitive or illegal information, or disguising a research location
avoiding disclosure of personal data under GDPR or reputation damage
for commercial reasons, such as commercial sensitivity, avoiding asia rcs data revealing trade secrets or patented information.
Individual patient data should never be disclosed, unless a participant has given specific consent to do so or a legally compliant exemption is in place to do so. An example of such an exemption in England and Wales is Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006 which provides the statutory power for the NHS to use information which may identify patients who have not given consent, where such data support core NHS activity.
Disclosure occurs when a person or an organisation uses published data in order to find and reveal sensitive or unknown information about a data subject. A person’s identity can be disclosed from:
direct identifiers such as names, addresses, postcode, telephone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, or pictures;
indirect identifiers which, especially in combination with other publicly available information sources, could identify someone, such as information on workplace or residence, occupation or exceptional values of characteristics like salary or age.
Demographic information can be particularly revealing when combined with other data such as a detailed employment description and a very localised geographic area. Text-based and open-ended variables in surveys can contain detailed unique information.