anonymize

verb anon·y·mize \ ə-ˈnä-nə-ˌmīz \

variants: also British anonymise

|Updated on: 15 Jul 2018

Definition of anonymize

anonymized; anonymizing

: 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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anonymization

also British anonymisation play \ə-ˌnä-nə-mə-ˈzā-shən\ noun

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anonymizer

also British anonymiser noun

Recent Examples of anonymize from the Web

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
Equally important, Apple has invested heavily in building data mining tools that respect user privacy and attempt to anonymize and obfuscate user data in mathematically defensible ways.

— alex salkever, Fortune, "Commentary: Apple Actually Cares About Users’ Data. Facebook Could Learn a Lesson.," 27 Mar. 2018
To allay that fear, researchers anonymize genomes and follow health privacy laws.

— bradley j. fikes, sandiegouniontribune.com, "Does your genome really give you away? Scientists criticize Human Longevity study," 12 Sep. 2017
In many markets, including the United States, Uber has the technology to act as a middleman and anonymize contact details during calls and texts.

— jordan golson, Car and Driver, "Uber App Gets a Chat Function to Better Connect Drivers and Riders," 10 Aug. 2017

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.