Privacy aware recommendation: Reinforcement learning based user profile perturbation

Yilin Xiao, Liang Xiao, Hailu Zhang, Shui Yu, H. Vincent Poor

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

User profile release in recommendation systems can apply the user profile perturbation technique to protect user privacy, in which each user sends a perturbed user profile such as the a list of clicked items to receive a recommendation service from a server. The perturbation policy such as the privacy budget determines the recommendation quality and the privacy level, while its optimization usually depends on the known attack model, which is rarely known by the users. In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning based user profile perturbation scheme that applies differential privacy to protect user privacy for recommendation systems. According to reinforcement learning, the privacy budget to perturb the released user profile depends on the features of the actual user profiles and the released user profiles, and the estimated user privacy level. This scheme enables a user to optimize his or her perturbation policy in terms of both the user privacy level and the received recommendation quality without being aware of the attack model. We evaluate the computational complexity of this scheme and analyze a case study, a privacy aware movie recommendation system. Simulation results show that this scheme improves user privacy protection for a given level of recommendation quality compared with a benchmark profile perturbation scheme.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2019 - Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781728109626
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2019
Event2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2019 - Waikoloa, United States
Duration: Dec 9 2019Dec 13 2019

Publication series

Name2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2019 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWaikoloa
Period12/9/1912/13/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Information Systems
  • Signal Processing
  • Information Systems and Management
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
  • Media Technology
  • Health Informatics

Keywords

  • Differential privacy
  • Privacy protection
  • Recommendation systems
  • Reinforcement learning
  • User profile perturbation

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Privacy aware recommendation: Reinforcement learning based user profile perturbation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this