How to encrypt a string variable with names in R

Question

I am working in a little project in R and I need to mask or encrypt the names in a variable in a data frame. I have the next structure for my data frame:

Name                Value.R
Bank of Italy         200
Josh Peters           300
Fist Bank of Americas 500
Neil Rodes            520
Oil Team World        700

I am looking for a way to protect the names in name variable, something like this:

Name                Value.R
BXXk of IXXXy         200
JXXh PXXXrs           300
FXXt BXXk of AmXXXcas 500
NXXl RXXes            520
OXl TXXm WXXld        700

I don't if it is possible to make in R. Thanks for your help.

digest package may of interest. Also, a highly related question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5806308/how-do-i-encrypt-data-in-r — sckott, Nov 04 '13 at 21:07
Is that example of encryption really good enough for your standards? — Dason, Nov 04 '13 at 21:11
In particular, following up on @ScottChamberlain: `library(digest); digest("Bank of Italy","crc32")` gives `"8e7332c5"` (other hashes are cryptographically superior but longer) — Ben Bolker, Nov 04 '13 at 21:13
Well, which is it: encrypt or mask? They're radically different. Your "something like this" names are trivial to decode as written, regardless of the length or content of the "xxx" you show. — Carl Witthoft, Nov 04 '13 at 21:15
Thanks for your answers I made a complex analysis and I want to hide names, digest is working fine @BenBolker — Duck, Nov 04 '13 at 21:17
@Duck : once a few hours have elapsed you can (and are encouraged to) post your own solution to this question. — Ben Bolker, Nov 04 '13 at 21:24
Dear @BenBolker I used `digest` function creating a new variable in my Data frame but I got the same value for all elements simply I put `DF$Name.Encrypt=digest(DF$Name,"crc32")` and all names that were different got the same code, could I solve it. — Duck, Nov 04 '13 at 21:32
`DF$Name.Encrypt=sapply(DF$Name,digest,"crc32")` or `DF=transform(DF,Name.Encrypt=sapply(Name,digest,"crc32"))` — Ben Bolker, Nov 04 '13 at 21:38

Matthew Plourde · Answer 1 · 2013-11-04T21:25:45.167

This is one option that gets close to what you show:

x <- c('Bank of Italy', 'First Bank of Americas')
gsub('([A-Z])([a-z]+)([a-z])', '\\1X\\3', x)
# [1] "BXk of IXy"     "FXt BXk of AXs"

If your expectation of obfuscation isn't too high (which it doesn't seem to be), you could also use abbreviate:

x <- c("Bank of Italy",
"Josh Peters",
"Fist Bank of Americas",
"Neil Rodes",
"Oil Team World")
abbreviate(x)
# [1] "BnoI" "JshP" "FBoA" "NlRd" "OlTW"

How to encrypt a string variable with names in R

1 Answers1