User k-anonymity for privacy preserving data mining of query logs

  • Authors:

  • Guillermo Navarro-Arribas;Vicenç Torra;Arnau Erola;Jordi Castellí-Roca

  • Affiliations:

  • IIIA, Institut d'Investigació en Intelligència Artificial - CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Campus UAB s/n, 08193 Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain;IIIA, Institut d'Investigació en Intelligència Artificial - CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Campus UAB s/n, 08193 Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain;Departament d'Enginyeria Informítica i Matemítiques, UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av. Països Catalans 26, E-43007 Tarragona, Spain;Departament d'Enginyeria Informítica i Matemítiques, UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av. Països Catalans 26, E-43007 Tarragona, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

The anonymization of query logs is an important process that needs to be performed prior to the publication of such sensitive data. This ensures the anonymity of the users in the logs, a problem that has been already found in released logs from well known companies. This paper presents the anonymization of query logs using microaggregation. Our proposal ensures the k-anonymity of the users in the query log, while preserving its utility. We provide the evaluation of our proposal in real query logs, showing the privacy and utility achieved, as well as providing estimations for the use of such data in data mining processes based on clustering.