topic How to mask unique identifier variable to make data anonymous yet keeping logical structure? in SAS Procedures

How to mask unique identifier variable to make data anonymous yet keeping logical structure?

Cruise — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 18:47:16 GMT

I have a repeated measurement data of individuals. How to mask the unique identifier variable (before data sharing) while keeping nature of repeated records and other logics embedded? Uniq_id variable is very long in and length and numeric. Using SAS 9.4.

data temp; 
input uniq_id;
datalines;
2007122345567889
2007122345567889
2007122345567889
2008235689875421
2008235689875421
2008235689875421
;
data temp; set temp;
format uniq_id 20.;
run;

Re: How to mask unique identifier variable to make data anonymous yet keeping logical structure?

Reeza — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 19:55:56 GMT

1. Create a list of your ID's, only unique values

2. Create a list of random IDs in the data set from step1, keeping the seed value stored - you'll want to keep track of the seeds over time so I recommend keeping a master file of seeds.

3. Match ID to RandomID so that an ID for a person is constant throughout the data set but it doesn't have the any significance.

Fully worked example here:

https://gist.github.com/statgeek/fd94b0b6e78815430c1340e8c19f8644