Metrics and your privacy

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 14:36:24 +0000,
  Alan <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> If you wanted to go that way a cryptographic hash is the usual approach.
> Its trivial to turn the data into the hash, collisions are improbable but
> its almost impossible to reverse the hash into anything.

That assumes there are lots of possible source texts. If the hash is based
just off of types of hardware, it should be reversible. If it includes
device serial numbers reversing it will be much harder (but there may
be correlations between serial numbers of various parts that would
allow someone to reverse the hash in some cases). People may be a bit
more nervous about handing out a hash that is made using serial numbers.
I think it would be a could idea to say something about what is being hashed,
though I realize that people might be more scared by this than they really
should be.