In plain English
The key idea is that the connection between the data and specific people has been broken. Identifying details have been removed or altered, so the people the data is about cannot be identified.
In context
Here, “anonymized” describes data whose identifying information has been removed or changed so the people it concerns cannot be identified.
- Situation
- Understanding encryption, privacy, data-sharing, and secure-connection labels
- What it communicates
- describes data after identifying details have been removed
Meaning limits
The term by itself does not say how this state was achieved, only that the data is in a form where the people it is about cannot be identified.
Examples
“The archive released anonymized census records, with names and street addresses removed from each entry.”
“By the time the students received the spreadsheet, the survey data was already anonymized.”