suppress: Suppress Identifiable Information

In shuklak13/anonymizeR: Simple Functions to Anonymize Data

Description

Suppress Identifiable Information

Usage

suppress(x, rows = NULL, cols = NULL, over = c("both"), order = 1)

suppressRows(x, rows = NULL, order = 1)

suppressCols(x, cols = NULL, order = 1)

suppressColumns(x, cols = NULL, order = 1)

Arguments

x	a data.frame
rows	the rows that are to be removed - may be numeric (row indices) or character (row names). An optional parameter - use if automated suppression is not desired
cols	the columns that are to be removed - may be numeric (column indices) or character (column names). An optional parameter - use if automated suppression is not desired
over	use "row" if suppression of rows is desired, "col" is suppression of columns is desired, or "both" for suppression of both
order	the order of suppression. See details

Details

When anonymizing data, it is often desirable to remove variables that allow for individuals to be easily identified. It may also be desirable to remove individuals from the data if they contain unique attributes that make them easy to identify. This function assists in anonymization by removing rows or columns that fall under these categories. The rows and columns that are desired to be removed may be specified as a parameter, in which case the function simply removes the specified rows and columns. If no rows or columns are supplied, the function will remove all rows containing completely unique observations and/or columns containing identifiable information. The order parameter is used to increase the anonymity of the data. It can be thought of as the minimum number of times a value must occur for it to not be considered identifiable. If a column contains a variable that does not occur at least order number of times, that column is removed. Similarly, if a row does not occur more than order number of times, then that row is removed.

Value

data.frame with with rows and/or columns removed

Functions

• suppress: Shortcut function that may execute suppressRows, suppressCols, or both

• suppressRows: Suppress rows containing unique observations

• suppressCols: Suppress columns with Identifying Values

• suppressColumns: identical to suppressCols

Examples

suppress(data)
suppress(data, over=c("rows"))
suppressRow(data, rows=c(29,34,70))
suppressCol(data, order=3)

shuklak13/anonymizeR documentation built on May 29, 2019, 9:27 p.m.