Overview and Taxonomy of Technique for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage

• Activity Number: 54
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 4, 2013 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Peter Christen*+
• Companies: The Australian National University
• Keywords: Data linkage ; Record linkage ; Data matching ; Privacy technology

Abstract

Record linkage is the process of identifying which records in two or more databases correspond to the same real-world entity. Three major challenges of this process are (1) achieving high linkage quality, (2) scalability to linking very large databases, and (3) protecting the privacy and confidentiality of personal identifying data that are used in the linkage process.

This presentation provides an overview of the various techniques that have been developed to facilitate the linking of data across organisations in such ways that no private or confidential information is being revealed. We then characterise such privacy-preserving record linkage techniques along fifteen dimensions. This provides us with a taxonomy that allows us to highlight shortcomings of current techniques and discuss future research directions.