Abstract

This chapter is structured to provide an introduction to Differential Privacy. It begins by illustrating various attempts to protect data privacy, emphasizing where and why they failed, and providing the key desiderata of a robust privacy definition (Section 1.2). It then defines the key actors, tasks, and scopes that make up the domain of privacy-preserving data analysis (Section 1.3). Following that, Section 1.4, formalizes the definition of DP and its inherent properties, including composition, post-processing immunity, and group privacy. The chapter also reviews the basic techniques and mechanisms commonly used to implement Differential Privacy in Sections 1.4 to 1.6. Finally, Section 1.8 concludes with an overview of Differential Privacy applications and some future directions in this field.