Which term describes data that has been sanitized to remove personal identifiers before sharing?

• A. Data format
• B. Deidentification
• C. Data Tag
• D. Declassification

Answer: (B)

Removing personal identifiers from data before sharing is deidentification. It protects privacy by stripping or masking information that could identify someone, such as names, addresses, and exact identifiers, and by generalizing or suppressing other details that could link data back to an individual. This enables valuable data sharing for analysis while reducing the risk of re-identification. In practice, deidentification can follow standards like the HIPAA Safe Harbor method (removing a specific set of identifiers) or an expert determination process that evaluates and mitigates residual risk. The other terms don’t fit: data format concerns how data is encoded or structured; data tag isn’t a standard privacy term; declassification refers to lifting a security or classification level, not removing personal identifiers.