A Terminology for Talking About Privacy by Data Minimization: Anonymity
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A terminology for talking about privacy by data minimization: Anonymity, Unlinkability, Undetectability, Unobservability, Pseudonymity, and Identity Management (Version v0.34 Aug. 10, 2010) Andreas Pfitzmann Marit Hansen TU Dresden ULD, Kiel [email protected] [email protected] Archive of this document http://dud.inf.tu-dresden.de/Anon_Terminology.shtml (v0.5 and all succeeding versions) Starting with v0.20, color is essential to understand the figures and part of the translations. Abstract Based on the nomenclature of the early papers in the field privacy by data minimization, we develop a terminology which is both expressive and precise. More particularly, we define anonymity, unlinkability, linkability, undetectability, unobservability, pseudonymity (pseudonyms and digital pseudonyms, and their attributes), identifiability, identity, partial identity, digital identity and identity management. In addition, we describe the relationships between these terms, give a rationale why we define them as we do, and sketch the main mechanisms to provide for the properties defined. Table of contents 1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................6 2 Setting ..........................................................................................................................................6 3 Anonymity.....................................................................................................................................9 4 Unlinkability ................................................................................................................................12 5 Anonymity in terms of unlinkability .............................................................................................14 6 Undetectability and unobservability............................................................................................16 7 Relationships between terms .....................................................................................................19 8 Known mechanisms for anonymity, undetectability, and unobservability...................................20 9 Pseudonymity.............................................................................................................................21 10 Pseudonymity with respect to accountability and authorization ...............................................24 10.1 Digital pseudonyms to authenticate messages .................................................................24 10.2 Accountability for digital pseudonyms................................................................................24 10.3 Transferring authenticated attributes and authorizations between pseudonyms...............24 11 Pseudonymity with respect to linkability ...................................................................................25 11.1 Knowledge of the linking between the pseudonym and its holder .....................................25 11.2 Linkability due to the use of a pseudonym across different contexts.................................26 12 Known mechanisms and other properties of pseudonyms.......................................................28 13 Identity management................................................................................................................29 13.1 Setting................................................................................................................................29 13.2 Identity and identifiability....................................................................................................29 13.3 Identity-related terms .........................................................................................................31 Role........................................................................................................................................31 - 2 - Partial identity.........................................................................................................................31 Digital identity.........................................................................................................................32 Virtual identity.........................................................................................................................32 13.4 Identity management-related terms ...................................................................................33 Identity management..............................................................................................................33 Privacy-enhancing identity management ...............................................................................33 Privacy-enhancing identity management enabling application design...................................33 User-controlled identity management ....................................................................................34 Identity management system (IMS) .......................................................................................34 Privacy-enhancing identity management system (PE-IMS) ...................................................34 User-controlled identity management system ........................................................................34 14 Overview of main definitions and their opposites .....................................................................35 15 Concluding remarks .................................................................................................................35 References ....................................................................................................................................35 Appendices....................................................................................................................................38 A1 Relationships between some terms used.............................................................................38 A2 Relationship to the approach of Alejandro Hevia and Daniele Micciancio ...........................38 A3 Relationship of our definitions of anonymity and of identifiability to another approach ........40 Index..............................................................................................................................................41 Translation of essential terms .......................................................................................................44 To Czech ...................................................................................................................................44 To Dutch ....................................................................................................................................49 To French ..................................................................................................................................54 To German.................................................................................................................................59 To Greek....................................................................................................................................64 To Italian ....................................................................................................................................69 To Japanese ..............................................................................................................................74 To Russian.................................................................................................................................79 To Slovak...................................................................................................................................85 To Turkish..................................................................................................................................90 To <your mother tongue> ..........................................................................................................95 Table of figures Fig. 1: Setting..............................................................................................................................7 Fig. 2: Example of an attacker’s domain within the setting .........................................................8 Fig. 3: Anonymity sets within the setting...................................................................................10 Fig. 4: Anonymity sets w.r.t. attacker within the setting ............................................................11 Fig. 5: Unobservability sets within the setting ...........................................................................18 Fig. 6: Unobservability sets w.r.t. attacker within the setting.....................................................18 Fig. 7: Pseudonymity.................................................................................................................23 Fig. 8: Lattice of pseudonyms according to their use across different contexts........................27 Fig. 9: Anonymity set vs. identifiability set.................................................................................30 Fig. 10: Relation between anonymity set and identifiability set...................................................32 Table of tables Table 1: Close matches between terms........................................................................................39 List of abbreviations DC-net Dining Cryptographers network iff if and only if - 3 - IHW Information Hiding Workshop IMS