Online Frequency Estimation with Adaptive Locally Differentially Private Mechanisms
Giray Düzel, Sinan Yuldırım · 2025
We propose a new online frequency estimation algorithm in a local differential privacy (LDP) setting with adaptive randomized response mechanisms. The method is based on two components: (i) Online expectation-maximization (EM) for parameter estimation; (ii) using an adaptive randomized response mechanism to provide LDP. The purpose of the adaptation is to increase the utility of the randomized responses. We present numerical results that show the benefit of adapting. The paper also includes several extensions of the current work that are to be explored.