Classification Under Local Differential Privacy with Model Reversal and Model Averaging

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Qin, Caihong, Bai, Yang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Qin, Caihong
Bai, Yang
author_facet Qin, Caihong
Bai, Yang
contents Local differential privacy (LDP) has become a central topic in data privacy research, offering strong privacy guarantees by perturbing user data at the source and removing the need for a trusted curator. However, the noise introduced by LDP often significantly reduces data utility. To address this issue, we reinterpret private learning under LDP as a transfer learning problem, where the noisy data serve as the source domain and the unobserved clean data as the target. We propose novel techniques specifically designed for LDP to improve classification performance without compromising privacy: (1) a noised binary feedback-based evaluation mechanism for estimating dataset utility; (2) model reversal, which salvages underperforming classifiers by inverting their decision boundaries; and (3) model averaging, which assigns weights to multiple reversed classifiers based on their estimated utility. We provide theoretical excess risk bounds under LDP and demonstrate how our methods reduce this risk. Empirical results on both simulated and real-world datasets show substantial improvements in classification accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_05797
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Classification Under Local Differential Privacy with Model Reversal and Model Averaging
Qin, Caihong
Bai, Yang
Machine Learning
Methodology
Local differential privacy (LDP) has become a central topic in data privacy research, offering strong privacy guarantees by perturbing user data at the source and removing the need for a trusted curator. However, the noise introduced by LDP often significantly reduces data utility. To address this issue, we reinterpret private learning under LDP as a transfer learning problem, where the noisy data serve as the source domain and the unobserved clean data as the target. We propose novel techniques specifically designed for LDP to improve classification performance without compromising privacy: (1) a noised binary feedback-based evaluation mechanism for estimating dataset utility; (2) model reversal, which salvages underperforming classifiers by inverting their decision boundaries; and (3) model averaging, which assigns weights to multiple reversed classifiers based on their estimated utility. We provide theoretical excess risk bounds under LDP and demonstrate how our methods reduce this risk. Empirical results on both simulated and real-world datasets show substantial improvements in classification accuracy.
title Classification Under Local Differential Privacy with Model Reversal and Model Averaging
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05797