This Springer brief provides the necessary foundations to understand
differential privacy and describes practical algorithms enforcing this
concept for the publication of real-time statistics based on sensitive
data. Several scenarios of interest are considered, depending on the
kind of estimator to be implemented and the potential availability of
prior public information about the data, which can be used greatly to
improve the estimators' performance. The brief encourages the proper use
of large datasets based on private data obtained from individuals in the
world of the Internet of Things and participatory sensing. For the
benefit of the reader, several examples are discussed to illustrate the
concepts and evaluate the performance of the algorithms described. These
examples relate to traffic estimation, sensing in smart buildings, and
syndromic surveillance to detect epidemic outbreaks.