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. 2019 May 23;4(1):1094.
doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v4i1.1094.

Privacy preserving linkage using multiple match-keys

S M Randall  1 , A P Brown  1 , A M Ferrante  1 , J H Boyd  1
Affiliations

Privacy preserving linkage using multiple match-keys

S M Randall et al. Int J Popul Data Sci. .

Abstract

Introduction: Available and practical methods for privacy preserving linkage have shortcomings: methods utilising anonymous linkage codes provide limited accuracy while methods based on Bloom filters have proven vulnerable to frequency-based attacks.

Objectives: In this paper, we present and evaluate a novel protocol that aims to meld both the accuracy of the Bloom filter method with the privacy achievable through the anonymous linkage code methodology.

Methods: The protocol involves creating multiple match-keys for each record, with the composition of each match-key depending on attributes of the underlying datasets being compared. The protocol was evaluated through de-duplication of four administrative datasets and two synthetic datasets; the 'answers' outlining which records belonged to the same individual were known for each dataset. The results were compared against results achieved with un-encoded linkage and other privacy preserving techniques on the same datasets.

Results: The multiple match-key protocol presented here achieved high quality across all datasets, performing better than record-level Bloom filters and the SLK, but worse than field-level Bloom filters.

Conclusion: The presented method provides high linkage quality while avoiding the frequency based attacks that have been demonstrated against the Bloom filter approach. The method appears promising for real world use.

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Conflict of interest statement

Statement on conflicts of interest: The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1: Privacy preserving linkage using an independent third party
Figure 1: Privacy preserving linkage using an independent third party
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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