Method and apparatus for variable privacy preservation in data mining

Improved privacy preservation techniques are disclosed for use in accordance with data mining. By way of example, a technique for preserving privacy of data records for use in a data mining application comprises the following steps/operations. Different privacy levels are assigned to the data records. Condensed groups are constructed from the data records based on the privacy levels, wherein summary statistics are maintained for each condensed group. Pseudo-data is generated from the summary statistics, wherein the pseudo-data is available for use in the data mining application. Principles of the invention are capable of handling both static and dynamic data sets.