Anonymous Tag Communication System for Privacy Preservation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing communication technologies, such as encryption and onion routing, fail to provide perfect anonymity as they can reveal message destinations through unencrypted headers and public keys, making it difficult to maintain sender and receiver anonymity, especially over networks where routing infrastructure knows the identities of the parties involved.
Innovation Solution
A privacy-preserving communication system that uses anonymous tags generated from shared secret information, combined with encryption, to ensure that only the communicating parties can identify the sender, receiver, and access the content, without revealing their identities or IP addresses, and prevents collusion by not sharing download privileges without secret keys.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If encryption is used to conceal communication content, then content security is improved, but anonymity is not guaranteed because unencrypted headers reveal message destinations and public keys can identify recipients
Solution Approach 1:
The communication system segments the identification mechanism into two parts: public keys for content encryption and anonymous tags for routing identification. This segmentation allows the content to be encrypted with public keys while the routing information uses anonymous tags that do not reveal recipient identity, thus resolving the contradiction between content security and anonymity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary anonymous tag system that mediates between the encrypted content and the routing infrastructure. The anonymous tag acts as a mediator that the routing system can use to deliver messages without learning the actual recipient identity, while the recipient can retrieve their messages using their private key to generate matching anonymous tags.
2Loss of information
If onion routing is used to provide anonymous communication, then sender and recipient anonymity is improved, but the system requires senders to know destination addresses beforehand which compromises recipient anonymity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional onion routing approach by allowing recipients to proactively publish their anonymous tags to the server without needing to communicate their identity to potential senders. Senders can then anonymously post encrypted messages to the server with the recipient's anonymous tag, and the server delivers them without either party needing to know the other's identity or address.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables recipients to self-service their own address publication by generating and publishing their anonymous tags to the server autonomously. This eliminates the need for senders to obtain recipient addresses through off-band channels, as the recipient's anonymous tag serves as their public address that can be freely published without compromising anonymity.
3Productivity
If routing infrastructure is used to deliver messages, then message delivery is improved, but the routing infrastructure knows the identities of sender and recipient compromising anonymity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces anonymous tags as an intermediary that allows the routing infrastructure to perform message delivery without learning participant identities. The routing system operates on anonymous tags rather than real identities, enabling productive message delivery while preserving anonymity by decoupling the delivery mechanism from identity information.
Data Source
AI summary
Anonymous information sharing systems and methods enable communication of information to parties in a privacy-preserving manner such that no one other than the designated parties can know the source, recipient, and content of the information. Furthermore, the communication can be accomplished without requiring trial decryption, and protection can be provided against of sharing of privileges.