Privacy Implications of Database Ranking

Summary: Shows that top-k ranks can leak attributes hidden from query results when ranking uses private fields. Introduces a query-interface/adversary taxonomy and inference attacks validated theoretically, experimentally, and against large real-world web databases. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: h4dcbb86b3f0a00e8
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2015
Pagerank: 5.4979255e-05
Overall Rank: 7,494 | 49.77%
DOI: 10.14778/2794367.2794379
PDF: Download (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Md Farhadur Rahman (University of Texas)
2. Weimo Liu (George Washington University)
3. Saravanan Thirumuruganathan (University of Texas)
4. Nan Zhang (George Washington University)
5. Gautam Das (University of Texas)

BibTeX Citation

@article{rahman_vldb15,
        title = {{Privacy Implications of Database Ranking}},
        author = {Rahman, Md Farhadur and Liu, Weimo and Thirumuruganathan, Saravanan and Zhang, Nan and Das, Gautam},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '15},
        volume = {8},
        number = {10},
        pages = {1106--1117},
        doi = {10.14778/2794367.2794379},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2794367.2794379},
        year = {2015}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 1 of 1 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
8,118	Heterogeneous Recommendations: What You Might Like To Read After Watching Interstellar	2017	VLDB	5.3739121e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 8 of 8 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
5	Optimal Aggregation Algorithms for Middleware [Extended Abstract]	2001	PODS	0.0010688884
478	Automated Ranking of Database Query Results	2003	CIDR	0.00017612826
1,110	Range Queries in OLAP Data Cubes	1997	SIGMOD	0.00011949109
1,367	A Unified Approach to Ranking in Probabilistic Databases	2009	VLDB	0.00010878876
1,897	Probabilistic Ranking of Database Query Results	2004	VLDB	9.3988624e-05
5,996	A Random Walk Approach to Sampling Hidden Databases	2007	SIGMOD	5.9037651e-05
8,861	Unbiased Estimation of Size and Other Aggregates Over Hidden Web Databases	2010	SIGMOD	5.2477452e-05
12,625	Rank Discovery From Web Databases	2013	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	7,413	Efficient and Generic Evaluation of Ranked Queries	2011	SIGMOD
2	478	Automated Ranking of Database Query Results	2003	CIDR
3	1,897	Probabilistic Ranking of Database Query Results	2004	VLDB
4	2,315	Principled Evaluation of Differentially Private Algorithms using DPBench	2016	SIGMOD
5	8,557	Discovering the Skyline of Web Databases	2016	VLDB
6	12,834	Privacy Preservation of Aggregates in Hidden Databases: Why and How?	2009	SIGMOD
7	12,425	Query Reranking As A Service	2016	VLDB
8	4,738	Practical Private Range Search Revisited	2016	SIGMOD
9	1,343	A Privacy-Preserving Index for Range Queries	2004	VLDB
10	12,625	Rank Discovery From Web Databases	2013	VLDB