AI代理可自动追踪位置数据并识别个人,威胁隐私安全。
Agentic AI-Powered Re-Identification: An Emerging, Scalable Threat to Mobility Microdata Privacy

- 用大模型代理自动搜索网络信息,实现无人工干预的定位追踪
- 在真实场景中成功识别25人中的18人(72%),共43例中18例(41.9%)
- 揭示隐私保护新风险,适合数据安全与政策制定者阅读
商业数据经纪商广泛收集精细位置数据,带来未被公众充分认知的重识别风险。尽管以往研究表明,少量时空点即可唯一标识个体,但传统攻击需专家手动操作,难以规模化。本可行性研究展示,在真实环境中,基于智能体的AI彻底改变了这一威胁模型。我们构建了端到端流程:大型语言模型代理自主搜索公开网页、比对公共记录与社交媒体,将原始坐标序列解析为候选身份,全程无需人工介入。在包含真实住址及工作地附近模拟位置点的时空数据集上评估,聚焦高风险泄露场景。结果表明,仅凭时空数据与公开信息,该系统成功重识别出25名可识别个体中的18人(72%),43个案例中18例(41.9%)。研究讨论了对统计披露控制(SDC)实践的影响,并指出数据保管方与监管机构须预见未来升级风险。事实上的匿名性——现行政策基石——正面临动摇。此技术使重识别在成本仅数分钟与美元的前提下变得合理可能,符合GDPR第26条关于‘合理可能性’的标准。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The widespread collection of fine-grained location data by commercial data brokers creates a re-identification risk that is not widely recognised by the public. While prior research has established that mobility traces are highly unique and that individuals can, in principle, be identified from a handful of spatio-temporal points, such attacks have historically required significant manual effort from skilled analysts, limiting their practical scale. In this feasibility study, we demonstrate in a real world setting that agentic AI fundamentally changes this threat model. We present an end-to-end pipeline in which large language model agents autonomously search the open web, cross-reference public records and social media, and resolve raw coordinate sequences to candidate identities - without human intervention. We evaluate the pipeline on a spatio-temporal dataset containing simulated location points anchored at and around true home and work addresses, focusing on a high-risk disclosure scenario. Our results demonstrate that, from spatio-temporal data and public sources alone, our agentic AI successfully re-identified 18 of the 25 re-identifiable individuals (72%) and 18 of 43 cases overall (41.9%). We discuss implications for Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) practice and outline the near-future escalation that data custodians and regulators must anticipate. De facto anonymity - an implicit foundation of SDC practice - is shifting. Agentic AI strengthens the case that re-identification is reasonably likely by any means under the GDPR Recital-26 standard, at costs of minutes-and-dollars per target.
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