More Apps Should Use Differential Privacy

Apple’s icon to denote privacy.

News app Tonic is different than most news apps because it uses differential privacy. More apps should do the same.

Before your eyes cross, a real-life example Cyphers gave me is the census. The government has a lot of aggregate data about its citizens—and it probably wants to share demographic information from that set without revealing anything about any one particular individual. Let’s say you live in a small census block with only one or two people. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out personal information about you, given the right parameters. Differential privacy would be a way to summarize that data without putting any one individual at risk.

Check It Out: More Apps Should Use Differential Privacy

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