Patent ID: 8812524

Claim:
A method for preserving privacy of a dataset, where the dataset has at least a sensitive data field and one or more fields of at least one first quasi-identifier, the method comprising: determining a k-anonymity value K with respect to the sensitive data field according to the at least one first quasi-identifier; determining to adopt the at least one first quasi-identifier to categorize the dataset into a plurality of groups, if the k-anonymity value K is less than a reference number Kr, wherein data entries in each of the plurality of groups have the same value in the one or more fields of at least one first quasi-identifier and data entries in different groups of the plurality of groups have different values in the one or more fields of at least one first quasi-identifier; determining the number of data entries in each of the plurality of groups; determining a first group among the plurality of groups, wherein the number of data entries, N 1 , in the first group is less than the reference number Kr; determining a second group among the plurality of groups, whereby when the first group and the second group are merged into a merging group, the number of data entries, Nm, in the merging group is not less than the reference number Kr; and masking the one or more fields of at least one first quasi-identifier for the merging group.