arrow
Return

Privacy preserving data visualizations

delete2021-01-07
delete11
delete
OA
AI
D
Demetris Avraam *
R
Rebecca Wilson
O
O. W. Butters
T
Thomas Burton
C
Christos Nicolaides
E
Elinor Jones
A
Andy Boyd
P
Paul R. Burton
DOI:10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-00257-4delete
deleteOriginal
deleteShare
deleteSave
View PDF
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Data visualizations are a valuable tool used during both statistical analysis and the interpretation of results as they graphically reveal useful information about the structure, properties and relationships between variables, which may otherwise be concealed in tabulated data. In disciplines like medicine and the social sciences, where collected data include sensitive information about study participants, the sharing and publication of individual-level records is controlled by data protection laws and ethico-legal norms. Thus, as data visualizations - such as graphs and plots - may be linked to other released information and used to identify study participants and their personal attributes, their creation is often prohibited by the terms of data use. These restrictions are enforced to reduce the risk of breaching data subject confidentiality, however they limit analysts from displaying useful descriptive plots for their research features and findings. Here we propose the use of anonymization techniques to generate privacy-preserving visualizations that retain the statistical properties of the underlying data while still adhering to strict data disclosure rules. We demonstrate the use of (i) the well-known k-anonymization process which preserves privacy by reducing the granularity of the data using suppression and generalization, (ii) a novel deterministic approach that replaces individual-level observations with the centroids of each k nearest neighbours, and (iii) a probabilistic procedure that perturbs individual attributes with the addition of random stochastic noise. We apply the proposed methods to generate privacy-preserving data visualizations for exploratory data analysis and inferential regression plot diagnostics, and we discuss their strengths and limitations.
Keywords:
Sensitive data
Data visualizations
Disclosure control
Privacy protection
Anonymization
AI Summary

AI Summary

Key information extracted from the uploaded paper, including a brief overview, abstract, background, key highlights, visual analysis, and future outlook.

Journal

EPJ Data Science cover
EPJ Data Science
IF:
2.5
Papers:
695
Citations:
1.6K

Organization

N
newcastle university - uk
Scholars:
2.9W
Papers: 2.6W
Citations: 39
U
University College London
Scholars:
7.9W
Papers: 6.2W
Citations: 15.7W
U
University of Cyprus
Scholars:
4.3K
Papers: 5.0K
Citations: 3
U
university of oxford
Scholars:
9.8W
Papers: 8.6W
Citations: 137
U
university of london
Scholars:
21.5W
Papers: 19.7W
Citations: 305
researcher View more organizations
Cited Papers

Cited Papers

Data Visualization in Sociology
err2014-07-30
err90
errOAAI
errHealy, Kieran; Moody, James
errShare
errSave
errShare
errSave
CURA
err2016-08-02
err0
PREAI
errChun-Han Lin; Chih-Kai Kang; Pi-Cheng Hsiu
errShare
errSave
Privacy-by-design in big data analytics and social mining
err2014-09-24
err44
errOAAI
errMonreale, Anna; Rinzivillo, Salvatore; Pratesi, Francesca; Giannotti, Fosca; Pedreschi, Dino
errShare
errSave
Visualizing biological data-now and in the future
err2010-03-01
err105
PREAI
errO'Donoghue, Sean I.; Gavin, Anne-Claude; Gehlenborg, Nils; Goodsell, David S.; Heriche, Jean-Karim; Nielsen, Cydney B.; North, Chris; Olson, Arthur J.; Procter, James B.; Shattuck, David W.; Walter, Thomas; Wong, Bang
errShare
errSave
Family caregivers' experience of activities of daily living handling in older adult with stroke: a qualitative research in the Iranian context
err2016-08-16
err0
PREAI
errAli Hesamzadeh; Asghar Dalvandi; Sadat Bagher Maddah; Masoud Fallahi Khoshknab; Fazlollah Ahmadi; Nazila Mosavi Arfa
errShare
errSave
researcher View more