Data mining as a tool in privacy-preserving data publishing

Abstract

 Many databases contain data about individuals that are valuable
for research, marketing, and decision making. Sharing or publishing data about
individuals is however prone to privacy attacks, breaches, and disclosures. The
concern here is about individuals’ privacy – keeping the sensitive information
about individuals private to them. Data mining in this setting has been shown
to be a powerful tool to breach privacy and make disclosures. In contrast, data
mining can be also used in practice to aid data owners in their decision on how
to share and publish their databases. We present and discuss the role and uses of
data mining in these scenarios and also briefly discuss other approaches to private
data analysis.