It seems there are enough engineers, or at least there are enough to reverse the anonymization and reveal details that customers rightly considered private.
"Difficult" to de-anonymize is not enough. It must be impossible, and the burden of risk must be on Netflix, not the customer. We're sympathetic in this case because the contest is innovative and interesting. Imagine a slightly different story. In this one, the FBI asks Netflix for "anonymized" information, then de-anonymizes it and starts wiretapping people considered "suspicious." I think we would be rightly appalled at the idea of the government monitoring the movies we watch, and we would criticize anyone handing over the information they need to do it without asking or notifying us.
It's the same thing here, and Netflix should ensure opt-in with full disclosure of the potential for de-anonymization for the same reasons.
When I sign up for a service, I don't expect the vendor to publish data of my transactions to the entire world, even if they claim it is anonymized.
Netflix is also facing problems because there is a specific law (the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988) that makes it illegal for them to reveal data that could be linked to service subscribers. In this case the burden of proof would fall on Netflix to prove the dataset could not reveal a single link between subscriber and rental history.
"Difficult" to de-anonymize is not enough. It must be impossible, and the burden of risk must be on Netflix, not the customer. We're sympathetic in this case because the contest is innovative and interesting. Imagine a slightly different story. In this one, the FBI asks Netflix for "anonymized" information, then de-anonymizes it and starts wiretapping people considered "suspicious." I think we would be rightly appalled at the idea of the government monitoring the movies we watch, and we would criticize anyone handing over the information they need to do it without asking or notifying us.
It's the same thing here, and Netflix should ensure opt-in with full disclosure of the potential for de-anonymization for the same reasons.
When I sign up for a service, I don't expect the vendor to publish data of my transactions to the entire world, even if they claim it is anonymized.