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I am using the digest function to mask some sensitive information in R. Is it possible to retrieve the original data after masking?

Any insights would be highly appreciated.

Thanks Priyanka

priyanka singh
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    When asking for help, you should include a simple [reproducible example](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example) with sample input. We have no idea what your code does so it's hard to say for sure what's going on. – MrFlick Jun 18 '18 at 16:24
  • anonymize <- function(x, algo="crc32"){ unq_hashes <- vapply(unique(x), function(object) digest(object, algo=algo), FUN.VALUE="", USE.NAMES=TRUE) unname(unq_hashes[x]) } # choose columns to mask cols_to_mask <-c("BENE_NUM","BENE_EQTB_NUM") # backup original data data_copy<-copy(my_data) # anonymize my_data[,(cols_to_mask):= lapply(.SD, anonymize),.SDcols=cols_to_mask,with=FALSE] – priyanka singh Jun 18 '18 at 20:03

1 Answers1

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No it's not possible. If you just need to hide the data from plain sight, you can use base 64 encoding. E.g.:

library(base64enc)

x <- "sensitive data"
x64 <- base64enc::base64encode(charToRaw(x))
print(x64)
[1] "c2Vuc2l0aXZlIGRhdGE="

rawToChar(base64decode(x64))

[1] "sensitive data"

Otherwise, you can use encryption, which there are packages for.

thc
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