  Preserving privacy of users is a key requirement of web-scale analytics and
reporting applications, and has witnessed a renewed focus in light of recent
data breaches and new regulations such as GDPR. We focus on the problem of
computing robust, reliable analytics in a privacy-preserving manner, while
satisfying product requirements. We present PriPeARL, a framework for
privacy-preserving analytics and reporting, inspired by differential privacy.
We describe the overall design and architecture, and the key modeling
components, focusing on the unique challenges associated with privacy,
coverage, utility, and consistency. We perform an experimental study in the
context of ads analytics and reporting at LinkedIn, thereby demonstrating the
tradeoffs between privacy and utility needs, and the applicability of
privacy-preserving mechanisms to real-world data. We also highlight the lessons
learned from the production deployment of our system at LinkedIn.
