NEWS
privacyR 1.0.1 (2025-11-23)
Bug Fixes
- Critical fix: Replaced weak hash function in UUID generation with cryptographic hash (MD5) to prevent duplicate UUIDs for different patients in large datasets
- Added robust hash function for datasets with more than 5 unique values
- Maintains backward compatibility: small datasets (≤5 unique values) use original hash method
- Now handles datasets with 1 million+ records without collisions
- Added
digest package as required dependency for robust hashing
- Maintains referential integrity (same input → same UUID) while ensuring uniqueness
Technical Details
- For large datasets (>5 unique values): Uses MD5 hash via
digest package
- For small datasets (≤5 unique values): Uses original hash method (backward compatible)
- MD5 collision probability for 1M records: ~10^-15 (negligible)
- All functions using UUIDs (anonymize_id, anonymize_names, anonymize_locations) benefit from this fix
privacyR 1.0.0 (2025-11-17)
Changes
- Fixed README.md to remove reference to DISCLAIMER file (CRAN compliance)
- Disclaimer text now only in README.md
- First stable release
privacyR 0.1.1
Changes
- Package renamed from shadowR to privacyR to avoid CRAN name conflict
- Fixed LICENSE format for CRAN compliance
- Updated CDC HIPAA URL reference
- Added DISCLAIMER to .Rbuildignore
privacyR 0.1.0
Features
- Initial release of privacyR package
anonymize_id() function for anonymizing patient identifiersanonymize_names() function for anonymizing patient namesanonymize_dates() function with shift and round methodsanonymize_locations() function with remove and generalize methodsanonymize_dataframe() function for anonymizing entire data frames- Comprehensive test suite using testthat
- Vignette with detailed examples and best practices
- Full roxygen2 documentation