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A quasi-identifier is a set of attributes that can be used to re-identify entries in anonymized data sets. A group of individuals is considered about whom quasi-identifying numerical information is disclosed such as date of birth, age, weight, and height. The fraction of individuals is determined whose information is unique in that group and hence is identifiable unambiguously. Nonuniformity can be captured well by a single number, the Kullback-Leibler distance. For example sets of real microdata, given approximations based on Kullback-Leibler distances are accurate. Second, the effect of disclosing more specific or less specific information is analyzed experimentally. Third, the effect of correlation between numerical attributes is measured. A formula gives the re-identifiability level. The approximations are validated using publicly available demographic data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some domains, the need for data privacy and data sharing conflict. Data obfuscation addresses this dilemma by extending several existing technologies and defining obfuscation properties that quantify the technologies' usefulness and privacy preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the growth of big data and open data in recent years, the importance of data anonymization is increasing. Original data need to be anonymized to prevent personal identification from being revealed before being released to the public. There is a growing variety of de-identification methods which have been proposed to reduce the privacy issues, however, there is still much to be improved. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the possibilities of re-identification from masked data, and to compare the pros and cons of different de-identification methods. A set of electronic toll collection data from Taiwan was used and we successfully re-identified vehicles with specific patterns. Four de-identification methods were performed and finally we compared the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and evaluated their appropriateness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]