Issues of Verifying Anonymity: An Overview

The processing of anonymous data has great potential for research, economy, and society. However, due to legal ambiguities regarding anonymization and the verification of anonymity, its potential is not exploited yet. This paper addresses the chances and issues regarding the concept of anonymization and discusses what needs to be clarified to enable organizations to verify whether data are anonymized in a GDPR-compliant way. Based on this discussion, the paper proposes the implementation of a metrics system as a possible preliminary solution to solve the issues with anonymization and the verification of anonymity.