Introducing ADegree: Anonymisation of Social Networks Through Constraint Programming

Sergei Solonets, Victor Drobny, Victor Rivera, Jooyoung Lee

Abstract: With the rapid growth of Online Social Networks (OSNs) and the information involved in them, research studies concerning OSNs, as well as the foundation of businesses, have become popular. Privacy on OSNs is typically protected by anonymisation methods. Current methods are not sufficient to ensure privacy and they impose restrictions on the network making it not suitable for research studies. This paper introduces an approach to find an optimal anonymous graph under user-defined metrics using Constraint Programming, a technique that provides well-tested and optimised engine for combinatorial problems. The approach finds a good trade-off between protection of sensitive data and quality of the information represented by the network.