But Mr Clayton said the recent row over search data released by AOL showed that identificationofusers could still be made even without a machine's unique IP address.
C. asserted that from January 2009 through June 2010, and again from October 2010 through October 2011, Myspace, a social media Web site, transmitted information, including internal identification numbers ofusers, and their ages and genders, to outside ad networks that served ads to Myspace.
But Shibboleth handles all the identification and authentication ofusers in between the school and the database, thus reducing the complexity of management and protecting the privacy of individual users.
However, he did say that the bureau will rely on browser-based encryption and a user identification number found on each of the census short forms to authenticate users.