TLDP: An Algorithm of Local Differential Privacy for Tensors

Tensor-valued data, increasingly common in applications like spatiotemporal modeling and social networks, pose unique challenges for privacy protection due to their multidimensional structure and the risk of losing critical structural information. Traditional local differential privacy (LDP) methods, designed for scalars and matrices, are insufficient for tensors, as they fail to preserve essential relationships among tensor elements. We introduce TLDP, a novel \emph{LDP} algorithm for \emph{T}ensors, which employs a randomized response mechanism to perturb tensor components while maintaining structural integrity. To strike a better balance between utility and privacy, we incorporate a weight matrix that selectively protects sensitive regions. Both theoretical analysis and empirical findings from real-world datasets show that TLDP achieves superior utility while preserving privacy, making it a robust solution for high-dimensional data.