Anonymous Trustworthiness Scores for Privacy-Preserving Service Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Computing devices interfacing with services face challenges in assessing user trustworthiness while preserving privacy, as existing methods often rely on identifying information that can lead to user tracking and privacy violations.
Innovation Solution
A system that utilizes a separate scoring computing system to maintain trustworthiness scores based on user identifiers, allowing devices to use anonymous identifiers and receive signed trustworthiness scores, while incorporating feedback from service computing systems to enhance accuracy without revealing personal information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If user identifying information is used to assess trustworthiness, then trustworthiness assessment accuracy is improved, but user privacy is compromised due to tracking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a trustworthiness score as an intermediary value that mediates between the service provider's need for trust assessment and the user's privacy protection. Instead of directly using user identifying information, the system uses a score that can be computed from identifying information but does not itself reveal the identifying information to the service provider. This resolves the contradiction by allowing accurate trustworthiness assessment while preventing privacy violation through the intermediary score mechanism.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the essential trustworthiness metric from the complete user identifying information. Rather than transmitting or storing full user identifiers, the system extracts only the trustworthiness score component that is needed for service provision. This extraction process separates the useful trust assessment function from the harmful privacy-exposing identifying information, resolving the technical contradiction.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If anonymous identifiers are used to protect privacy, then user privacy is preserved, but trustworthiness assessment becomes less accurate
Solution Approach 1:
The trustworthiness score serves as an intermediary that bridges anonymous identifiers and accurate trust assessment. The score is computed using user identifying information (maintaining privacy by not exposing it) and then used to assess trustworthiness accurately. This intermediary mechanism allows the system to work with anonymous identifiers while maintaining assessment accuracy through the score.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary computation of the trustworthiness score using user identifying information before the service provision occurs. This preliminary action creates a trustworthiness metric that can be used with anonymous identifiers, ensuring that the accuracy is established in advance while privacy is protected during the actual service interaction.
3Reliability
If user identifying information is shared with service providers, then trustworthiness can be assessed, but user tracking and privacy violations occur
Solution Approach 1:
The trustworthiness score acts as an intermediary that enables reliability assessment without direct sharing of user identifying information. The score captures the essential trustworthiness evaluation needed by service providers while preventing user tracking, as the score itself does not contain or reveal the identifying information. This resolves the contradiction between reliability evaluation and preventing harmful tracking effects.
Solution Approach 2:
The system extracts only the trustworthiness evaluation component from user identifying information, separating it from the identifying details that would enable tracking. By taking out just the reliability metric needed for service provision and discarding or protecting the identifying information, the system achieves trustworthy evaluation without generating harmful tracking effects.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are disclosed relating to computing security and privacy. In some embodiments, a computing device provides, to a service computing system, a service request that identifies an action and includes an anonymous identifier for a user of the computing device. The computing device receives, from the service computing system, a score request for a trustworthiness score indicative of the user's trustworthiness. In response to receiving the score request from the service computing system, the computing device provides information indicative of the user's identity to a scoring computing system and receives the trustworthiness score and a corresponding score signature from the scoring computing system. In response to receiving the score and the score signature from the scoring computing system, the computing device provides the score to the service computing system.