First, whereas private credit registries are made up of public institutions that are constituted within the framework of supervising the banking sector, public credit bureaus are created in response to the need and demand for information on borrowers in the banking market.
However, when such registries were made available, many clinical researchers "did not bother to use those registers".
Registries were made anonymous with the aim of ensuring the confidentiality of the information.
Record linkage of individuals across these registries was made possible through the unique National Registration Number assigned to each Swedish resident at birth or immigration.
The recommended change in coding practice by European registries was made in 1995, but pathological practice may have changed before that.
Cross-linkage between registries was made with the unique personal identification number assigned to all Danish citizens from birth or immigration.
Linkage between registries was made by the civil registration number stored in the Danish Civil Registration System together with information on vital status, emigration, address, and nuclear family members' civil registration number since 1968 (Frank, 2000).
But the confidential registry is made up largely of people who are not convicted criminals or registered sex offenders.
However, no mention of participation in such a registry is made in the article, although several are available (e.g. European examples [ 14, 15], the Spanish aHUS Registry [ 16] and the Alexion-run Registry [ 17]).
But Verisign, which owns the Web's.com registry, is making progress: Last February, it signed up its first major customer for a cellphone-based authentication program, Paypal.
