{"doi":"10.1142/s0218488502001648","title":"k-ANONYMITY: A MODEL FOR PROTECTING PRIVACY","abstract":"<jats:p> Consider a data holder, such as a hospital or a bank, that has a privately held collection of person-specific, field structured data. Suppose the data holder wants to share a version of the data with researchers. How can a data holder release a version of its private data with scientific guarantees that the individuals who are the subjects of the data cannot be re-identified while the data remain practically useful? The solution provided in this paper includes a formal protection model named k-anonymity and a set of accompanying policies for deployment. A release provides k-anonymity protection if the information for each person contained in the release cannot be distinguished from at least k-1 individuals whose information also appears in the release. This paper also examines re-identification attacks that can be realized on releases that adhere to k-anonymity unless accompanying policies are respected. The k-anonymity protection model is important because it forms the basis on which the real-world systems known as Datafly, μ-Argus and k-Similar provide guarantees of privacy protection. </jats:p>","journal":"International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems","year":2002,"id":8518,"datarank":28.919627426060647,"base_score":9.040500592684284,"endowment":9.040500592684284,"self_citation_contribution":1.3560750889026427,"citation_network_contribution":27.563552337158004,"self_endowment_contribution":1.3560750889026427,"citer_contribution":27.563552337158004,"corpus_percentile":97.9,"corpus_rank":1770,"citation_count":8437,"citer_count":197,"citers_with_citation_signal":197,"citers_with_endowment":197,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2002-10-01","authors":[{"id":74153,"name":"LATANYA SWEENEY","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":5,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}