A Comprehensive Analysis of Factors Impacting Membership Inference

Abstract

We analyze various factors affecting the proper functioning of MIA and MINT, two research lines aimed at detecting data used for training. The difference between these lines lies in the environmental conditions, while the fundamental bases are similar for both. As evident in the literature, this detection task is far from straightforward and poses an ongoing challenge for the scientific community. Specifically, in this work, we conclude that factors such as the number of times data passes through the original network, the loss function, or dropout significantly impact detection outcomes. Therefore, it is crucial to consider them when developing these methods and during the training of any neural network, both to avoid (MIA) and to enhance (MINT) this detection. We evaluate the AdaFace facial recognition model using five databases with over 22 million images, modifying the different factors under analysis and defining a suitable protocol for their examination. State-of-the-art accuracy reaching up to 87% is achieved, surpassing existing methods.