AI Governance Engineer
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Anonymous data

By Updated

Information that does not relate to an identifiable person, judged against all the means reasonably likely to be used by anyone to identify them 1. It falls outside the GDPR, but the claim decays as auxiliary data and re-identification techniques improve, so it needs a dated assessment.

Developed in
ch. 19, Anonymisation versus pseudonymisation
Chapters
ch. 19, Privacy & AI
Contrast with
Pseudonymisation
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Commonly confused

  • Pseudonymisation versus Anonymous data

    Pseudonymisation
    Processing personal data so it can no longer be attributed to a person without additional information kept separately and protected.
    Anonymous data
    Information that does not relate to an identifiable person, judged against all the means reasonably likely to be used by anyone to identify them.

    The differenceRe-attributable with separately kept information, so still personal data, against not relating to an identifiable person at all.

    Why it mattersPseudonymised data keeps every GDPR duty; an anonymity claim needs a dated assessment.

Where it is used

The term is not used under this name in running prose; the sections listed under "Developed in" treat it.

Sources

  1. [1] Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) (Arts. 4(1), 4(5), 4(7), 4(8), 4(12), 4(14), 5, 6, 9, 12(3), 22, 25, 28(2) and 28(4), 30, 33, 35; Recital 26). Publications Office of the EU (EUR-Lex). 2016-04-27. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Anonymous data. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/anonymous-data. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026anonymousdata,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Anonymous data}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/anonymous-data}
}