Anonymizing Cable TV Subscriber Data for Secure Ratings
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for collecting television program ratings face challenges in maintaining data security and anonymity, particularly in transferring information from cable television subscribers to ratings providers without revealing identities of sampled households, while ensuring the ratings provider has access only to sampled subscriber data.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that anonymize and encrypt household identification and VOD usage data, allowing the ratings provider to de-anonymize and decrypt information specific to sampled households while preventing access to non-sampled households, using techniques such as symmetric ciphers and report keys to ensure secure data transfer.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the cable provider provides VOD usage data for all households to the ratings provider, then the ratings provider can access sampled household data, but the ratings provider can also access non-sampled household data which violates privacy requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the household data into two distinct segments: sampled households and non-sampled households. This segmentation allows the ratings provider to access only the sampled portion while excluding the non-sampled portion, thereby resolving the contradiction between providing necessary data and protecting privacy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism (the cable provider's filtering system) that mediates between the complete household database and the ratings provider. This intermediary selectively transfers only sampled household data while blocking access to non-sampled data, solving the privacy violation problem.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the cable provider filters and provides only sampled household data to the ratings provider, then privacy of non-sampled households is protected, but the ratings provider cannot access the necessary data for accurate rating determination
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the complete household database into sampled and non-sampled portions, enabling the cable provider to selectively transfer only the sampled data needed for rating determination while protecting the privacy of non-sampled households.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts only the necessary sampled household data from the complete database and transfers it to the ratings provider, while leaving the non-sampled data inaccessible. This extraction approach ensures both privacy protection and data availability for rating analysis.
3Measurement precision
If the ratings provider knows the identities of sampled households, then accurate program rating determination is possible, but the cable provider can determine which households are sampled creating a security vulnerability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses the cable provider as an intermediary that knows the sampled household identities but does not reveal them to the ratings provider. The cable provider filters and transfers data in a way that maintains sampling accuracy for rating determination while preventing identity revelation, thus resolving the security vulnerability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different data accessibility qualities to different household segments: sampled households have full data accessibility for rating analysis, while non-sampled households have restricted access. This local quality differentiation enables accurate rating determination without compromising overall data security.
Data Source
AI summary
A television program ratings method and system includes transferring information associated with households from a cable provider to a ratings provider such that the ratings provider has access to information associated with sampled households and lacks access to information associated with non-sampled households. To this end, identity information and usage information associated with the households are respectively anonymized and encrypted. Knowledge of the identities of the sampled households enables the anonymized identity information and the encrypted usage information for the sampled households to be respectively de-anonymized and decrypted. The ratings provider knows which households are sampled households. As such, the ratings provider de-anonymizes and decrypts the information associated with the sampled households and then uses the de-anonymized and decrypted information to determine television program ratings. The cable provider anonymizes and encrypts the information for all households as the cable provider does not know which households are sampled households.