Final answer:
In the context of privacy and databases, epsilon refers to a parameter in differential privacy quantifying the privacy guarantee level. It is not directly connected to the removal of identifiers or the mathematical definition of privacy in itself.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term epsilon can have different meanings in various contexts. In the context of your question, epsilon seems to refer to a parameter in differential privacy, which is a methodology for ensuring the privacy of an individual's data in a statistical database. Differential privacy describes a promise, made by a data holder or curator, not to reveal whether any individual's data was included in a database, ensuring the privacy of database entries up to a certain quantifiable level described by epsilon. The smaller the value of epsilon, the greater the privacy guarantee provided by the differential privacy mechanism.
In mathematical terms, epsilon often represents a very small positive quantity that is used in limits and approximations. However, when we're talking about differential privacy, epsilon specifically refers to the metric of the privacy loss, quantifying the strength of the privacy guarantee given when releasing statistical information.