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zorrolovsky01/22/20251 replyview on HN

So many comments get caught on the wording 'deanonymization'. Is there a standardized definition of 'deanonymization' accross industry experts, privacy-conscious people and hackers?

For many commenters, it looks like deanonymization means unveiling highly sensitive info like name, address, email, etc.

For privacy-conscious individuals and hackers, it looks like it means 'revealing a data point that shouldn't be revealed'.

As a signal or Discord user, I would expect my country location not to be revealed to a person I don't know. So the latter definition makes sense to me.


Replies

aimazon01/22/2025

As you say, it depends on the person but I think for most people an acceptable definition is "deanonymization reveals PII". What qualifies as PII depends on the context/jurisdiction but typically an IP address would be considered PII whereas country (or a similar broad region) would not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_data