Anonymization can be described as The severing of links between people in a database and their records to prevent the discovery of the source of the records, and to maintain privacy and confidentiality.
In most cases anonymization of data provided a layer of privacy.
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in healthcare settings HIPAA mandates 18 identifiers to be protected. When you are planning to share the date with any of your partners to trouble shoot or building a proof of concept you anonymize these fields. For example instead of Date of Birth, you provide age range like 30–40 years.
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If you are building a POC and receive actual data from client and do not want the personally identifiable information to be displayed, you anonymize the social security number with dummy numbers.