k-anonymity
Crowd-based data protection
K-anonymity is a privacy standard for datasets requiring that any individual's record be indistinguishable from at least k-1 other records.
If a medical database has 5-anonymity, every combination of identifying traits (age, zip code, gender) matches at least five people, preventing someone from being singled out.
The concept guides how organizations anonymize data before sharing it.
Deriving principles from examples
- suppressionForcible prevention or concealment
- indistinguishabilityState of being identical
- data transformationAltering information structure or format
- hierarchyRanked authority structure
bucketing · binning · rounding · aggregation · coarsening · swapping
Removing identifying information
- de-identificationObscuring personal markers in records
- data protectionSecuring sensitive information
- PIIIdentity-revealing information
- re-identificationLinking data back to someone
microdata · confidentiality · sensitive data · background knowledge · adversary
Organized collection of information
- recordPreserved account or achievement
- tupleOrdered finite sequence
- attributeQuality assigned to something
- columnVertical structural element
row · tabular data · census · medical records · survey data · demographic data · public records · voter registration
generalization
Deriving principles from examples
- suppressionForcible prevention or concealment
- indistinguishabilityState of being identical
- data transformationAltering information structure or format
hierarchy · bucketing · binning · rounding · aggregation · coarsening · swapping
anonymization
Removing identifying information
- de-identificationObscuring personal markers in records
- data protectionSecuring sensitive information
- PIIIdentity-revealing information
re-identification · microdata · confidentiality · sensitive data · background knowledge · adversary
dataset
Organized collection of information
- recordPreserved account or achievement
- tupleOrdered finite sequence
- attributeQuality assigned to something
column · row · tabular data · census · medical records · survey data · demographic data · public records · voter registration · data sharing
- data privacydata privacy, GDPR, personal data, data protection, de-identification
anonymous, anonymity, pseudonymous, pseudonymity, anonymized, anonymize, anonymizing