Sanitization of Visual Multimedia Content: A Survey of Techniques, Attacks, and Future Directions

The exploding rate of multimedia publishing in our networked society has magnified the risk of sensitive information leakage and misuse, pushing the need to secure data against possible exposure. Data sanitization -- the process of obfuscating or removing sensitive content related to the data -- helps to mitigate the severe impact of potential security and privacy risks. This paper presents a review of the mechanisms designed for protecting digital visual contents (i.e., images and videos), the attacks against the cited mechanisms, and possible countermeasures. The provided thorough systematization, alongside the discussed challenges and research directions, can pave the way to new research.