{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,28]],"date-time":"2026-03-28T06:46:55Z","timestamp":1774680415520,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":16,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,30]],"date-time":"2022-05-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1653868800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Future Internet"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In recent years, the use of personal data in marketing, scientific and medical investigation, and forecasting future trends has really increased. This information is used by the government, companies, and individuals, and should not contain any sensitive information that allows the identification of an individual. Therefore, data anonymization is essential nowadays. Data anonymization changes the original data to make it difficult to identify an individual. ARX Data Anonymization and Amnesia are two popular open-source tools that simplify this process. In this paper, we evaluate these tools in two ways: with the OSSpal methodology, and using a public dataset with the most recent tweets about the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine. The assessment with the OSSpal methodology determines that ARX Data Anonymization has better results than Amnesia. In the experimental evaluation using the public dataset, it is possible to verify that Amnesia has some errors and limitations, but the anonymization process is simpler. Using ARX Data Anonymization, it is possible to upload big datasets and the tool does not show any error in the anonymization process. We concluded that ARX Data Anonymization is the one recommended to use in data anonymization.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/fi14060167","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,30]],"date-time":"2022-05-30T10:05:14Z","timestamp":1653905114000},"page":"167","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":22,"title":["Data Anonymization: An Experimental Evaluation Using Open-Source Tools"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Joana","family":"Tom\u00e1s","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Engineering of Coimbra\u2014ISEC, Polytechnic of Coimbra, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal"}]},{"given":"Deolinda","family":"Rasteiro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Engineering of Coimbra\u2014ISEC, Polytechnic of Coimbra, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9660-2011","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jorge","family":"Bernardino","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Engineering of Coimbra\u2014ISEC, Polytechnic of Coimbra, Rua Pedro Nunes, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal"},{"name":"Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC), University of Coimbra, P\u00f3lo II, Pinhal de Marrocos, 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Saeed, R., and Rauf, A. (2018, January 3\u20134). Anatomization through generalization (AG): A hybrid privacy-preserving approach to prevent membership, identity and semantic similarity disclosure attacks. Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Computing, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies (iCoMET), Sukkur, Pakistan.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICOMET.2018.8346323"},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"European Union (2022, January 04). Regulation (EU) 2016\/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council. Office Journal of the European Union. Available online: https:\/\/op.europa.eu\/en\/publication-detail\/-\/publication\/3e485e15-11bd-11e6-ba9a-01aa75ed71a1."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"(2022, May 13). Anonymization and GDPR Compliance; an Overview. Available online: https:\/\/www.gdprsummary.com\/anonymization-and-gdpr\/."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"84","DOI":"10.32628\/IJSRSET19629","article-title":"A Study on Models and Techniques of Anonymization in Data Publishing","volume":"6","author":"Sharma","year":"2019","journal-title":"Int. J. Sci. Res. Sci. Eng. Technol. IJSRSET"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1277","DOI":"10.1002\/spe.2812","article-title":"Flexible data anonymization using ARX\u2014Current status and challenges ahead","volume":"50","author":"Prasser","year":"2020","journal-title":"Softw. Pract. Exp."},{"key":"ref_6","first-page":"1274","article-title":"Comment on \u201cUnique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata\u201d","volume":"351","year":"2016","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"S\u00e1nchez, D., Mart\u00ednez, S., and Domingo-Ferrer, J. (2015). Supplementary materials for \u201cHow to avoid reidentification with proper anonymization\u201d\u2014comment on \u201cUnique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata\u201d. arXiv.","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aad9295"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gunawan, D., and Mambo, M. (2018, January 5\u20137). Set-valued Data Anonymization Maintaining Data Utility and Data Property. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication, Langkawi, Malaysia.","DOI":"10.1145\/3164541.3164583"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Murthy, S., Bakar, A.A., Rahim, F.A., and Ramli, R. (2019, January 27\u201329). A Comparative Study of Data Anonymization Techniques. Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE 5th Intl Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud (BigDataSecurity), IEEE International Conference on High Performance and Smart Computing, (HPSC) and IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IDS), Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/BigDataSecurity-HPSC-IDS.2019.00063"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101753","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cose.2020.101753","article-title":"Optimization-based k-anonymity algorithms","volume":"93","author":"Liang","year":"2020","journal-title":"Comput. Secur."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"(2022, March 15). ARX\u2014Data Anonymization Tool. Available online: https:\/\/arx.deidentifier.org\/."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"(2022, March 15). Amnesia. Available online: https:\/\/amnesia.openaire.eu\/Scenarios\/AmnesiaKMAnonymityTutorial.pdf."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"810","DOI":"10.1109\/TLA.2015.7069109","article-title":"Experimental Evaluation of Open Source Business Intelligence Suites using OpenBRR","volume":"13","author":"Marinheiro","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Lat. Am. Trans."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pereira, A.K., Sousa, A.P., Santos, J.R., and Bernardino, J. (2018, January 26\u201328). Open Source Data Mining Tools Evaluation using OSSpal Methodology. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Software Technologies, Porto, Portugal.","DOI":"10.5220\/0006907206720678"},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"60","article-title":"A Conceptual Model for the General Data Protection Regulation","volume":"Volume 12956","author":"Gervasi","year":"2021","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Computational Science and Its Applications\u2014ICCSA"},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"(2022, March 16). Pfizer Vaccine Tweets. Available online: https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/gpreda\/pfizer-vaccine-tweets."}],"container-title":["Future Internet"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/14\/6\/167\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,10]],"date-time":"2025-10-10T23:21:52Z","timestamp":1760138512000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/14\/6\/167"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,30]]},"references-count":16,"journal-issue":{"issue":"6","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,6]]}},"alternative-id":["fi14060167"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/fi14060167","relation":{},"ISSN":["1999-5903"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1999-5903","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,30]]}}}