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Measuring and predicting anonymity
Koot, M.R.
Publication date
2012
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Koot, M. R. (2012). Measuring and predicting anonymity.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Terminology . . . 4 1.2 Problem . . . 7 1.3 Contribution . . . 8 2 Background 11 2.1 Early concepts . . . 13 2.2 Information theory . . . 16 2.3 Process calculi . . . 18 2.4 Epistemic logic . . . 21 2.5 k-Anonymity . . . 23 2.6 Discussion . . . 25 3 Empirical study 27 3.1 Introduction . . . 27 3.2 Background . . . 29 3.3 Results . . . 32 3.4 Discussion . . . 39 4 Estimating uniqueness 41 4.1 Introduction . . . 41 4.2 Problem . . . 43 vi4.3 Methodology: birthday problems . . . 43
4.4 Experiments with demographic data . . . 47
4.5 Discussion and future work . . . 52
5 Analysis of singletons 55 5.1 Introduction . . . 55
5.2 Mean number of identifiable objects . . . 56
5.3 Variance of the number of identifiable objects . . . 62
5.4 Probability of at least one singleton . . . 65
5.5 Numerical experiments . . . 68
5.6 Concluding remarks . . . 68
6 Correlation and aggregation 71 6.1 Introduction . . . 71 6.2 Analysis of singletons . . . 73 6.3 Impact of interval-width . . . 78 6.4 Multivariate distributions . . . 83 6.5 Discussion . . . 85 7 Practical applications 91 7.1 Preliminary model . . . 92 7.2 Issues . . . 96
7.3 What steps to take next . . . 97
7.4 Other aspects . . . 98
7.5 Limitations and future work . . . 98
7.6 Conclusion . . . 99
8 Conclusions and future work 101
A ⇣(k, N ) for k = 1 . . . , 50 and N = 1, . . . , 20 103
B Example analysis: questionnaire 105
C Publications 113 Bibliography 115 List of Figures 123 List of Tables 125 Abstract (English) 127 Abstract (Dutch) 131 vii