ISDC considers the protection of confidentiality in archived data to be of paramount importance in its service to the social science research community. ISDC is committed to protecting the confidentiality of individuals' and business' details within its data collection. Data acquired from the ISDC may be used only for the purpose of statistical reporting and analysis, may not be used to identify private individuals, and is immune from use in legal proceedings.

All direct identifiers are omitted from datasets as part of the process of preparing the data for public release.
Thus, the ISDC microdata collection includes only anonymous records. Furthermore, when disclosure might be possible despite the application of these procedures, alternative procedures are taken for protecting confidentiality: erasing or grouping of indirect identifiers (such as age, year of immigration, geographical identifiers), masking or swapping of sensitive variables. A few datasets that include highly sensitive data are assigned a higher access rank. Possible access ranks are the Central Bureau of Statistics MUC (Microdata Under Contract) or the ISDC access mode 3 that requires the data producer's approval for each use.

Any effort to determine or release the identity of private individual or identifying information about that individual contained in the data collections archived herein is a violation of the law of Privacy Protection 1981, and of the ISDC rules. Thus, users of the data agree to:

 

 

• Use these datasets for statistical reporting and analysis only
• Make no attempt to reidentify any person or establishment included in the data
• Produce no links among ISDC datasets or between ISDC and other datasets that enable
• the disclosure of individual identities of respondents or subjects
• Not to give, sell or transfer, in any way, the data, or part of it, to anyone else
• Accept other limitations, if any, set by the data source