Analytics without Tears: Can Data Be Anonymized and Yet Still Useful?

By Lori Cameron
Published 08/03/2018
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analytics data250x250Researchers discuss the importance of new requirements for establishing policy standards as well as mechanisms for retaining privacy when analyzing users data.

More and more information is gathered about all of us, and used for a variety of reasonable commercial goals—recommendations, targeted advertising, optimizing product reliability or service delivery, say the authors of “Analytics without Tears or Is There a Way for Data to Be Anonymized and Yet Still Useful?” in the May/June 2018 issue of IEEE Internet Computing.

However, the risks of leakage or misuse also grow. Recent years have seen the development of a number of tools and techniques limit these risks, ranging from improved security for processing systems, through to control over what is disclosed in the results.

Most of these tools and techniques will require agreements on when and how they are used and how they inter-operate.

 


 

About Lori Cameron

Lori Cameron is a Senior Writer for the IEEE Computer Society and currently writes regular features for Computer magazine, Computing Edge, and the Computing Now and Magazine Roundup websites. Contact her at l.cameron@computer.org. Follow her on LinkedIn.