Re-identification Methods for Evaluating the Confidentiality of Analytically Valid Microdata

Disclaimer: This report is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion of work in progress. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau. A public-use microdata file should be analytically valid. For a very small number of uses, the microdata should yield analytic results that are approximately the same as the original, confidential file that is not distributed. If the microdata file contains a moderate number of variables and is required to meet a single set of analytic needs of, say, university researchers, then many more records are likely to be re-identified via modern record linkage methods than via the re-identification methods typically used in the confidentiality literature. This paper compares several masking methods in terms of their ability to produce analytically valid, confidential microdata.