M-invariance: towards privacy preserving re-publication of dynamic datasets

The previous literature of privacy preserving data publication has focused on performing "one-time" releases. Specifically, none of the existing solutions supports re-publication of the microdata, after it has been updated with insertions and deletions. This is a serious drawback, because currently a publisher cannot provide researchers with the most recent dataset continuously. This paper remedies the drawback. First, we reveal the characteristics of the re-publication problem that invalidate the conventional approaches leveraging k-anonymity and l-diversity. Based on rigorous theoretical analysis, we develop a new generalization principle m-invariance that effectively limits the risk of privacy disclosure in re-publication. We accompany the principle with an algorithm, which computes privacy-guarded relations that permit retrieval of accurate aggregate information about the original microdata. Our theoretical results are confirmed by extensive experiments with real data. C...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SIGMOD
• Authors: Xiaokui Xiao, Yufei Tao
• Keywords: Database, Original Microdata, Privacy Preserving Data, Rigorous Theoretical Analysis, SIGMOD 2007