anonymize

anon·y·mize | \ ə-ˈnä-nə-ˌmīz

How to pronounce anonymize (audio)

\

variants: also British anonymise

anonymized; anonymizing

Definition of anonymize

transitive verb

: to remove identifying information from (something, such as computer data) so that the original source cannot be known : to make (something) anonymous There's an incredible amount of data in your travel profile. So they improved security and created a sophisticated way to anonymize data.— Dana Hawkins

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Examples of anonymize in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web To protect privacy, data brokers must anonymize such records before sharing them with researchers and marketers. — Sophie Bushwick, Scientific American, ""Anonymous" Data Won't Protect Your Identity," 23 July 2019 While many companies claim to anonymize the data, Geoffrey found the extensions make a host of personal information easily available on the web. — Cat Zakrzewski, Washington Post, "The Technology 202: Facebook seeks outside help as it grapples with content moderation problems," 19 July 2019 Protesters also took other steps to anonymize their movements. — Jane Li, Quartz, "Telegram faced China-linked cyberattacks during Hong Kong extradition protest," 13 June 2019 Regulators have been considering the release of these data, including ways to anonymize and aggregate them appropriately, for well over a year. — Sheila C. Bair And Gaurav Vasisht, WSJ, "The Volcker Rule Needs Transparency More Than ‘Simplification’," 9 Sep. 2018 Photo: dado ruvic/Reuters In March, Mastercard joined with International Business Machines Corp. IBM -0.30% to set up an external trust that will hold and anonymize the data, so Mastercard has no ability to reidentify individuals from it. — Natalia Drozdiak, WSJ, "From Restaurants to Insurers, the Race to Comply With New GDPR Privacy Rules," 24 May 2018 Ram asked the university to anonymize University of Arizona’s student ID cards so that the school could examine where freshman students check in. — Charlie Lapastora, Fox News, "Arizona professor tracking student ID cards to determine whether students will drop out," 23 May 2018 Early on, the Aircloak team abandoned an attempt to anonymize targeted advertising, because there are so many transactions that can identify a person, Dr. Francis says. — Christopher Mims, WSJ, "Privacy Is Dead. Here’s What Comes Next," 6 May 2018 On the blog itself, comments are public and people often anonymize themselves. — Sarah Scoles, Longreads, "Meet the New Mormons," 8 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'anonymize.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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The first known use of anonymize was in 1858

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