A Survey of Privacy-Preserving Model Explanations: Privacy Risks, Attacks, and Countermeasures
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Abstract (arXiv)
As the adoption of explainable AI (XAI) continues to expand, the urgency to address its privacy implications intensifies. Despite a growing corpus of research in AI privacy and explainability, there is little attention on privacy-preserving model explanations. This article presents the first thorough survey about privacy attacks on model explanations and their countermeasures. Our contribution to this field comprises a thorough analysis of research papers with a connected taxonomy that facilitates the categorisation of privacy attacks and countermeasures based on the targeted explanations. This work also includes an initial investigation into the causes of privacy leaks. Finally, we discuss unresolved issues and prospective research directions uncovered in our analysis. This survey aims to be a valuable resource for the research community and offers clear insights for those new to this domain. To support ongoing research, we have established an online resource repository, which will be continuously updated with new and relevant findings. Interested readers are encouraged to access our repository at https://github.com/tamlhp/awesome-privex.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 109 of its 214 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2024.
Builds on
109 of 214 references.
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38 more
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50 most cited of 109 All 109 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 0; 2026: 3.
6 papers.
- 2024Fast-FedUL: A Training-Free Federated Unlearning with Provable Skew Resiliencecited by 8
- 2024Knowledge Distillation-Based Model Extraction Attack using GAN-based Private Counterfactual Explanationscited by 1
- 2024Heterogeneous Hypergraph Embedding for Recommendation Systemscited by 1
- 2026Fair Recourse for All: Ensuring Individual and Group Fairness in Counterfactual Explanationscited by 1
- 2026Linear Model Extraction via Factual and Counterfactual Queriescited by 1
- 2026Mitigating Explanation Leakage in Financial Fraud Detection Systemscited by 0
- 2026Mitigating Explanation Leakage in Financial Fraud Detection Systems23 Aug 2026
- 2026Linear Model Extraction via Factual and Counterfactual Queries10 Feb 2026
- 2026Fair Recourse for All: Ensuring Individual and Group Fairness in Counterfactual Explanations28 Jan 2026
- 2024Heterogeneous Hypergraph Embedding for Recommendation Systems4 Jul 2024
- 2024Fast-FedUL: A Training-Free Federated Unlearning with Provable Skew Resilience28 May 2024
- 2024Knowledge Distillation-Based Model Extraction Attack using GAN-based Private Counterfactual Explanations4 Apr 2024