From Theory to Comprehension: A Comparative Study of Differential Privacy and $k$-Anonymity

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04006v1
• Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 10:30:26 GMT
• Title: From Theory to Comprehension: A Comparative Study of Differential Privacy and $k$-Anonymity
• Authors: Saskia Nuñez von Voigt, Luise Mehner, Florian Tschorsch,
• Abstract summary: We study users' comprehension of privacy protection provided by a differential privacy mechanism. Our findings suggest that participants' comprehension of differential privacy protection is enhanced by the privacy risk model. Our results confirm our intuition that privacy protection provided by $k$-anonymity is more comprehensible.
• Score: 2.66269503676104
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: The notion of $\varepsilon$-differential privacy is a widely used concept of providing quantifiable privacy to individuals. However, it is unclear how to explain the level of privacy protection provided by a differential privacy mechanism with a set $\varepsilon$. In this study, we focus on users' comprehension of the privacy protection provided by a differential privacy mechanism. To do so, we study three variants of explaining the privacy protection provided by differential privacy: (1) the original mathematical definition; (2) $\varepsilon$ translated into a specific privacy risk; and (3) an explanation using the randomized response technique. We compare users' comprehension of privacy protection employing these explanatory models with their comprehension of privacy protection of $k$-anonymity as baseline comprehensibility. Our findings suggest that participants' comprehension of differential privacy protection is enhanced by the privacy risk model and the randomized response-based model. Moreover, our results confirm our intuition that privacy protection provided by $k$-anonymity is more comprehensible.

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