delta-Presence without complete world knowledge

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2009.125

Advances in information technology, and its use in research, are increasing both the need for anonymized data and the risks of poor anonymization. In [1], we presented a new privacy metric, delta-presence, that clearly links the quality of anonymization to the risk posed by inadequate anonymization. It was shown that existing anonymization techniques are inappropriate for situations where delta-presence is a good metric (specifically, where knowing an individual is in the database poses a privacy risk). This article addresses a practical problem with [1], extending to situations where the data anonymizer is not assumed to have complete world knowledge. The algorithms are evaluated in the context of a real-world scenario, demonstrating practical applicability of the approach.