AttributeRiskCalculation R Package2021/03/17 by Ryan Hornby, Hornby, Ryan, Jingchen Hu +1
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · Mathematics · #62-08 #Computation (stat.CO) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Methodology (stat.ME) #Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data #Probability and Risk Models #Statistical Methods and Bayesian Inference
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2103.09805
openalex publication_date 2021/03/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Synthetic data is a promising approach to privacy protection in many contexts. A Bayesian synthesis model, also known as a synthesizer, simulates synthetic values of sensitive variables from their posterior predictive distributions. The resulting synthetic data can then be released in place of the confidential data. An important evaluation prior to synthetic data release is its level of privacy protection, which is often in the form of disclosure risks evaluation. Attribute disclosure, referring to an intruder correctly inferring the confidential values of synthetic records, is one type of disclosure that is challenging to be computationally evaluated. In this paper, we review and discuss in detail some Bayesian estimation approaches to attribute disclosure risks evaluation, with examples of commonly-used Bayesian synthesizers. We create the AttributeRiskCalculation R package to facilitate its implementation, and demonstrate its functionality with examples of evaluating attribute disclosure risks in synthetic samples of the Consumer Expenditure Surveys.