Personally Identifiable Information (PII), as used in information security Information security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction. Mainly the Information Security Consultants are associated with it, refers to information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal, personally, identifiable, and identifying. Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used.

Although the concept of PII is ancient, it has become much more important as information technology Information technology is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware", according to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to and the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and have made it easier to collect PII, leading to a profitable market in collecting and reselling PII. PII can also be exploited by criminals to stalk or steal the identity Identity theft is a form of fraud in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. The victim of identity theft can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator's actions of a person, or to plan a person's murder Murder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with "malice aforethought", and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide . As the loss of a human being inflicts enormous grief upon the individuals close to the victim, as well as the fact that the or robbery Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force and/or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear. Precise definitions of the offence may vary, among other crimes. As a response to these threats, many web site privacy policies A privacy policy is a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer's data. The exact contents of a privacy policy will depend upon the applicable law and may need to address the requirements of multiple countries or jurisdictions. While there is no universal guidance for the content specifically address the collection of PII, and lawmakers have enacted a series of legislation to limit the distribution and accessibility of PII.

Examples

The following are often used for the express purpose of distinguishing individual identity, and thus are clearly PII under the definition used by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget is a Cabinet-level office, and is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP) (described in detail below):

• Full name (if not common)
• National identification number A national identification number or National Identity Card number is used by the governments of many countries as a means of tracking their citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents for the purposes of work, taxation, government benefits, health care, and other governmentally-related functions. Sometimes, the number will appear on an
• IP address An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network, that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A (in some cases)
• Vehicle registration plate A vehicle registration plate is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing region's database. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, while number
• Driver's license number
• Face, fingerprints, or handwriting
• Credit card numbers A bank card number is the primary account number found on credit cards and bank cards. It has a certain amount of internal structure and shares a common numbering scheme. Credit card numbers are a special case of ISO/IEC 7812 bank card numbers
• Digital identity Digital identity refers to the aspect of digital technology that is concerned with the mediation of people's experience of their own identity and the identity of other people and things. Digital identity also has another common usage as the digital representation of a set of claims made by one digital subject about itself or another digital
• Birthday
• Birthplace
• Genetic information

The following are less often used to distinguish individual identity, because they are traits shared by many people. However, they are potentially PII, because they may be combined with other personal information to identify an individual.

• First or last name, if common
• Country, state, or city of residence
• Age, especially if non-specific
• Gender or race
• Name of the school they attend or workplace
• Grades, salary, or job position
• Criminal record

When a person wishes to remain anonymous, descriptions of them will often employ several of the above, such as "a 34-year-old white male who works at Target Target Corporation, usually known simply as Target, is an American retailing company that was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1902 as the Dayton Dry Goods Company. In 1962, the company opened its first Target store in nearby Roseville. The Target store concept grew and eventually became the largest division of Dayton Hudson Corporation,". Note that information can still be private, in the sense that a person may not wish for it to become publicly known, without being personally identifiable. Moreover, sometimes multiple pieces of information, none sufficient by itself to uniquely identify an individual, may uniquely identify a person when combined; this is one reason that multiple pieces of evidence are usually presented at criminal trials. It has been shown that, in 1990, 87% of the population of the United States could be uniquely identified by gender, ZIP code, and full date of birth.^[1]

In privacy law

The U.S. government used the term "personally identifiable" in 2007 in a memorandum from the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)^[2], and that usage now appears in US standards such as the NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's official mission is to: Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information. The OMB memorandum defines PII as follows:

Information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.

A term similar to PII, "personal data" is defined in EU directive 95/46/EC, for the purposes of the directive:^[3]

Article 2a: 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

Another term similar to PII, "personal information" is defined in a section of the California data breach notification law, SB1386^[4]:

(e) For purposes of this section, "personal information" means an individual's first name or first initial and last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements, when either the name or the data elements are not encrypted: (1) Social security number. (2) Driver's license number or California Identification Card number. (3) Account number, credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code, or password that would permit access to an individual's financial account. (f) For purposes of this section, "personal information" does not include publicly available information that is lawfully made available to the general public from federal, state, or local government records.

The concept of information combination given in the SB1386 definition is key to correctly distinguishing PII, as defined by OMB, from "personal information", as defined by SB1386. Information, such as a name, that lacks context cannot be said to be SB1386 "personal information", but it must be said to be PII as defined by OMB. For example, the name John Smith In the United Kingdom and United States, John has historically been one of the most common male first names, and Smith is the most common surname in each. It is a recurrent pseudonym, placeholder name, or metasyntactic variable in those countries . In this fashion it is similar to the name "Joe Bloggs" in the United Kingdom and " has no meaning in the current context and is therefore not SB1386 "personal information", but it is PII. A Social Security Number In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2) of the Social Security Act, codified as 42 U.S.C. § 405(c)(2). The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent agency of the (SSN) without a name or some other associated identity or context information is not SB1386 "personal information", but it is PII. For example, the SSN 078-05-1120 by itself is PII, but it is not SB1386 "personal information". However the combination of a valid name with the correct SSN is SB1386 "personal information".^[5]

The combination of a name with a context may also be considered PII. For example if a person’s name is on a list of patients for a clinic known for treating people with a specific illness such as AIDS. However, it is not necessary for the name to be combined with a context in order for it to be PII. The reason for this distinction is that bits of information such as names, although they may not be sufficient by themselves to make an identification, may later be combined with other information to identify persons and expose them to harm.

According to the OMB, it is not always the case that PII is "sensitive", and context may be taken into account in deciding whether certain PII is or is not sensitive.^[6]

Canada

• Privacy Act The Privacy Act is Canadian federal legislation that came into effect on July 1, 1983. The act sets out rules for how institutions of the federal government must deal with personal information of individuals. Some salient provisions of the legislation are as follows: (governs the Federal Government agencies)

United States of America

Recently lawmakers have paid a great deal of attention to protecting a person's PII. One of the primary focuses of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (P.L.104-191) [HIPAA] was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. It was originally sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.). According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance (HIPAA), is to protect a patient's PII. The U.S. Senate has recently proposed the Privacy Act of 2005, which attempts to strictly limit the display, purchase, or sale of PII without the person's consent. Similarly, the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 attempts to prevent the acquiring of PII through phishing In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment.

U.S. lawmakers have paid special attention to the social security number In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2) of the Social Security Act, codified as 42 U.S.C. § 405(c)(2). The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent agency of the because it can be easily used to commit identity theft Identity theft is a form of fraud in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. The victim of identity theft can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator's actions. The Social Security Number Protection Act of 2005 and Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2005 each seek to limit the distribution of an individual's social security number.

On the other hand, many businesses see this increasing load of legislation as excessive, an unnecessary expense, and a barrier to progress. The increasing complexity of the laws might force companies to consult a lawyer just to engage in simple business practices such as server logging, user registration, and credit checks. Some have predicted such measures may inhibit the industry as a whole, lowering wages and creating a barrier to entry In economics and mostly especially in the theory of competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market. For this reason, a number of privacy laws stress the "acceptable uses" of PII, such as Massachusetts' Public Records Law and Fair Information Practices Act.

State Laws

• California
  • The California state constitution declares privacy an inalienable right in Article 1, Section 1.
  • California Online Privacy Protection Act(OPPA) of 2003
  • SB 1386 requires organizations to notify individuals when it is known or believed to be acquired by an unauthorized person.
• Massachusetts
  • 201 CMR 17.00: Standards for The Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth ^[7]

Proposed Federal Bills

• Privacy Act of 2005
• Information Protection and Security Act
• Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2005
• Online Privacy Protection Act of 2005
• Consumer Privacy Protection Act of 2005
• Anti-phishing Act of 2005
• Social Security Number Protection Act of 2005
• Wireless 411 Privacy Act

Federal Law

• Title 18 of the United States Code, section 1028d(7)
• US "Safe Harbor" Rules (EU Harmonisation)^{[citation needed]}

European Union (member states)

• Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
• Directive 95/46/EC (Data Protection Directive)
• Directive 2002/58/EC (the E-Privacy Directive)
• Directive 2006/24/EC Article 5 (The Data Retention Directive)

Further examples can be found on the EU privacy website.

United Kingdom & Ireland

• The UK Data Protection Act 1998
• The Irish Data Protection Acts 1998 and 2003
• Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
• The UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
• Employers' Data Protection Code of Practice
• Model Contracts for Data Exports
• The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003
• The UK Interception of Communications (Lawful Business Practice) Regulations 2000
• The UK Anti-Terrorism, Crime & Security Act 2001
• The UK Privacy & Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003

Forensics

In forensics Forensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action. The word forensic comes from the Latin adjective forensis, meaning "of or before the forum." In Roman times, a criminal charge meant presenting the case before a, the tracking down of the identity of a criminal, personally identifiable information is critical in zeroing in on the subject. Criminals will go to great trouble to avoid leaving any PII; they wear masks (faces and hair are PII), gloves (fingerprints are PII), clothing that covers personal marks (tattoos and scars are PII) and avoid writing anything in their own handwriting (handwriting can be PII). Also, more modern 'masks' may be used, such as using a proxy IP address An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network, that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: "A to avoid being tracked online as easily.

Personal safety

In some professions, it is dangerous for a person's identity to become known, because this information might be exploited violently by their enemies; for example, their enemies might hunt them down or kidnap loved ones to force them to cooperate. For this reason, the United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense is the U.S. federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the United States armed forces. The organization and functions of the DOD are set forth in Title 10 of the United States Code (DoD) has strict policies controlling release of PII of DoD personnel.^[8] Many intelligence agencies An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defense. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. The assembly and propagation of this have similar policies, sometimes to the point where employees do not disclose to their friends that they work for the agency.

Similar identity protection concerns exist for witness protection Witness protection is protection of a threatened witness, before, during and after a trial, usually by police. While a witness may only require protection until the conclusion of a trial, some witnesses are provided with new identity and may live out the rest of their lives under government protection programs, women's shelters A women's shelter is a place of temporary refuge and support for women escaping violent situations, such as rape, and domestic violence, and victims of domestic violence and other threats.

See also

• Personal identity (philosophy) In philosophy, personal identity refers to the numerical identity of persons through time. That is to say, the conditions under which a person is said to be identical to himself or herself through time
• Pseudonymity Pseudonymity is a word derived from pseudonym, meaning 'false name', and anonymity, meaning unknown or undeclared source, describing a state of mistaken disguised identity. The pseudonym identifies a holder, that is, one or more human beings who possess but do not disclose their true names . Most pseudonym holders use pseudonyms because they wish
• Anonymity Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown

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