Your Data, Their AI: What Companies Don't Tell You About "Anonymized" Data

Every day, you’re leaving behind data, clicks, searches, purchases, and preferences. Companies collect this information, remove your name or email, and call it “𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝.” Sounds safe, right? Yet, what happens next should make you think twice.

𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥: even when your personal information is stripped out, your behaviors, patterns, and choices remain. This “𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝” data is incredibly valuable for training AI systems, and most of the time, you’ve already agreed to it without realizing it.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰

Anonymized or cleaned data often falls into a legal gray area. While companies claim it’s free of personal identifiers, vague policies or partnerships can allow even more data to be touched than you might expect. For example:

• Anonymized data is often combined with other datasets, making it possible to infer additional details about you.
• “𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬” or “𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐈” clauses in End User License Agreements (EULAs) often allow companies to normalize and share far more data than users understand.

Even well-intentioned anonymization can raise questions about how much of your digital footprint is indirectly exposed when datasets are linked or shared across systems.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞

By collecting first-touch data (directly from you), second-touch data (from partners), and third-touch data (purchased externally), companies build comprehensive models of user behavior. Yet, with unclear rules and a lack of transparency, we often don’t realize the full extent of how our data is being used or combined behind the scenes.

“𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑦𝑚𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 𝑖𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑣𝑎𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜.”

𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲: The views within any of my posts, or newsletters are not those of my employer or the employers of any contributing experts.