Graph Unlearning: Efficient Node Removal in Graph Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Guan, Faqian, Zhu, Tianqing, Wang, Zhoutian, Ren, Wei, Zhou, Wanlei
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Guan, Faqian
Zhu, Tianqing
Wang, Zhoutian
Ren, Wei
Zhou, Wanlei
author_facet Guan, Faqian
Zhu, Tianqing
Wang, Zhoutian
Ren, Wei
Zhou, Wanlei
contents With increasing concerns about privacy attacks and potential sensitive information leakage, researchers have actively explored methods to efficiently remove sensitive training data and reduce privacy risks in graph neural network (GNN) models. Node unlearning has emerged as a promising technique for protecting the privacy of sensitive nodes by efficiently removing specific training node information from GNN models. However, existing node unlearning methods either impose restrictions on the GNN structure or do not effectively utilize the graph topology for node unlearning. Some methods even compromise the graph's topology, making it challenging to achieve a satisfactory performance-complexity trade-off. To address these issues and achieve efficient unlearning for training node removal in GNNs, we propose three novel node unlearning methods: Class-based Label Replacement, Topology-guided Neighbor Mean Posterior Probability, and Class-consistent Neighbor Node Filtering. Among these methods, Topology-guided Neighbor Mean Posterior Probability and Class-consistent Neighbor Node Filtering effectively leverage the topological features of the graph, resulting in more effective node unlearning. To validate the superiority of our proposed methods in node unlearning, we conducted experiments on three benchmark datasets. The evaluation criteria included model utility, unlearning utility, and unlearning efficiency. The experimental results demonstrate the utility and efficiency of the proposed methods and illustrate their superiority compared to state-of-the-art node unlearning methods. Overall, the proposed methods efficiently remove sensitive training nodes and protect the privacy information of sensitive nodes in GNNs. The findings contribute to enhancing the privacy and security of GNN models and provide valuable insights into the field of node unlearning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_04785
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Graph Unlearning: Efficient Node Removal in Graph Neural Networks
Guan, Faqian
Zhu, Tianqing
Wang, Zhoutian
Ren, Wei
Zhou, Wanlei
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
With increasing concerns about privacy attacks and potential sensitive information leakage, researchers have actively explored methods to efficiently remove sensitive training data and reduce privacy risks in graph neural network (GNN) models. Node unlearning has emerged as a promising technique for protecting the privacy of sensitive nodes by efficiently removing specific training node information from GNN models. However, existing node unlearning methods either impose restrictions on the GNN structure or do not effectively utilize the graph topology for node unlearning. Some methods even compromise the graph's topology, making it challenging to achieve a satisfactory performance-complexity trade-off. To address these issues and achieve efficient unlearning for training node removal in GNNs, we propose three novel node unlearning methods: Class-based Label Replacement, Topology-guided Neighbor Mean Posterior Probability, and Class-consistent Neighbor Node Filtering. Among these methods, Topology-guided Neighbor Mean Posterior Probability and Class-consistent Neighbor Node Filtering effectively leverage the topological features of the graph, resulting in more effective node unlearning. To validate the superiority of our proposed methods in node unlearning, we conducted experiments on three benchmark datasets. The evaluation criteria included model utility, unlearning utility, and unlearning efficiency. The experimental results demonstrate the utility and efficiency of the proposed methods and illustrate their superiority compared to state-of-the-art node unlearning methods. Overall, the proposed methods efficiently remove sensitive training nodes and protect the privacy information of sensitive nodes in GNNs. The findings contribute to enhancing the privacy and security of GNN models and provide valuable insights into the field of node unlearning.
title Graph Unlearning: Efficient Node Removal in Graph Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04785