The researchers found the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Danish University of Aarhus reveal research result. They examined a set of credit card data of 1.1 million people. The data contained neither names nor bank account numbers, but only the date, place and amount of payments that had been made by a particular account.
Nevertheless, the researchers were able to find an individual with a high probability in the record. For this purpose they had to know only four payment transactions with them and reconcile with the data set. Such private information can be derived for example, from a public tweet or a vote on the Internet.
The researchers did in this way that a person on Monday buy a coffee with a credit card paid, had bought on Tuesday at the grocery store, was in a sporting goods store and on Friday on Thursday at a clothing store, they could that person in 90 percent of cases in the find record.
