 Even if it is not easy for a lay person to break anonymity, once the steps to do so are disclosed and learnt, there is no need for higher level knowledge to access information in a database.Sometimes, technical expertise is not even needed if a population has a unique combination of identifiers.In the mid 1990s, a government agency in Massachusetts called Group Insurance Commission (GIC), which purchased health insurance for employees of the state, decided to release records of hospital visits to any researcher who requested the data, at no cost.