Paper 2018/277

Approximate and Probabilistic Differential Privacy Definitions

Sebastian Meiser

Abstract

This technical report discusses three subtleties related to the widely used notion of differential privacy (DP). First, we discuss how the choice of a distinguisher influences the privacy notion and why we should always have a distinguisher if we consider approximate DP. Secondly, we draw a line between the very intuitive probabilistic differential privacy (with probability $1-\delta$ we have $\varepsilon$-DP) and the commonly used approximate differential privacy ($(\varepsilon,\delta)$-DP). Finally we see that and why probabilistic differential privacy (and similar notions) are not complete under post-processing, which has significant implications for notions used in the literature.

Note: Added important citation to Kifer et al.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords
differential privacyfoundations
Contact author(s)
s meiser @ ucl ac uk
History
2018-11-01: last of 3 revisions
2018-03-22: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2018/277
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2018/277,
      author = {Sebastian Meiser},
      title = {Approximate and Probabilistic Differential Privacy Definitions},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2018/277},
      year = {2018},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/277}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/277}
}
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