[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #43545: Helper functions: Anonymizing data in a standardized way

[WordPress Trac]

#43545: Helper functions: Anonymizing data in a standardized way
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 Reporter:  dejliglama          |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement         |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal              |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Options, Meta APIs  |     Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal              |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch gdpr    |     Focuses:
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Comment (by postphotos):

 Thanks @jesperher for that detailed list!

 I wanted to comment on this bit:


 {{{
 case 'date':
                         //should we ever make something to do this? - can
 dates be personal?
 }}}

 Birthdates or the day when a user joins a service, for example, could
 partly reveal identity as it filters a larger dataset into a smaller one.

 It reminds me of the great dialogue in the #gdpr-compliance Slack channel
 about how user agents aren't exactly anonymous... Also,
 [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/tracking-by-user-agent the EFF
 wrote a great post a few years back] about what a user agent contains.

 My proposal would be to, on random submit for `time`, just return `0
 UTC`/[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time Thursday, January 1, 1970],
 which should indicate, universally, that this date was redacted.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43545#comment:10>
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