Dear Colleagues,

Due to the recent proliferation in digital solutions such as social networks (SN), recommender systems, cyberphysical social systems (CPSS), and the Internet of Things (IoT), a large amount of data about an individual is collected and processed. These collected data often contain information about an individual’s identity (i.e., demographics), salary, health status, social activities, etc. On one hand, this data is regarded as an oil of the economy when processed using advanced data mining and analytics tools. On the other hand, mishandling such data can spark public criticism and anger if privacy protection is not ensured. Making sense of such data while at the same time preserving privacy is another longstanding challenge in academia and research. To strike a balance between utility and privacy, much research has been proposed. Nevertheless, technical challenges and open research gaps remain in the area of privacy-preserving computing for analytics and mining purposes leverage individuals' data. 

This Special Issue aims to present recent advances in tools, methods, techniques, prototypes, case studies, and technologies to improve privacy preservation leveraging traditional and AI technologies.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

• Privacy-preserving computing;
• Privacy-preserving data publishing;
• Privacy-preserving data mining;
• Anonymization;
• Information privacy;
• Social network privacy preservation;
• Analytics techniques with privacy guarantees;
• Emerging privacy threats due to the adoption of social networks;
• IoT privacy challenges and innovative solutions;
• Big data privacy and security;
• Cloud computing privacy issues and solutions;
• Encryption techniques to protect the contents of personal data;
• Advance privacy protection techniques pertinent to the COVID-19 era;
• Privacy issues in the cyberphysical social systems (CPSS);
• Case studies about people’s perception about privacy in different regions;
• Emerging privacy issues due the digitization across the globe.

Dr. Majeed Abdul
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Anonymization
• Utility
• Privacy
• Microdata
• Statistical disclosure control
• Identity disclosure
• Sensitive information disclosure
• Association rule hiding
• Data generalization
• Social networks
• Data owners/holders
• Information privacy
• Generalization