Anonymization: the imperfect science of using data while preserving privacy
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Author(s)
Gadotti, Andrea
Rocher, Luc
Houssiau, Florimond
Creţu, Ana-Maria
de Montjoye, Yves-Alexandre
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Information about us, our actions, and our preferences is created at scale through surveys or scientific studies or as a result of our interaction with digital devices such as smartphones and fitness trackers. The ability to safely share and analyze such data is key for scientific and societal progress. Anonymization is considered by scientists and policy-makers as one of the main ways to share data while minimizing privacy risks. In this review, we offer a pragmatic perspective on the modern literature on privacy attacks and anonymization techniques. We discuss traditional de-identification techniques and their strong limitations in the age of big data. We then turn our attention to modern approaches to share anonymous aggregate data, such as data query systems, synthetic data, and differential privacy. We find that, although no perfect solution exists, applying modern techniques while auditing their guarantees against attacks is the best approach to safely use and share data today.
Date Issued
2024-07
Date Acceptance
2024-06-10
Citation
Science Advances, 2024, 10 (29)
ISSN
2375-2548
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Journal / Book Title
Science Advances
Volume
10
Issue
29
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39018389
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2024-07-17