Almost every piece of information contains sensitive and private data. Exposing publicly such data could lead to serious financial losses, legal issues and personal inconveniences. That’s why data protection and privacy are essential tasks in any data processing project.
When data cannot (public records) or should not (useful information for scientific research) remain private, anonymity or at least pseudonymity must be ensured. Anonymity is derived from the Greek word anonymia meaning ???without a name??? or ???namelessness???. The adjective ???anonymous??? is used to describe situations where the involved person’s name is unknown or hidden.