Email Anonymization via Trusted Party Routing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electronic communication methods, such as email encryption, do not effectively protect sender and recipient anonymity, as unauthorized parties can determine communication details from header information.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a trusted party to anonymize emails by encrypting and routing them through multiple trusted parties, using headers and trailers with symmetric keys, ensuring that only intended recipients can decrypt the messages.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If email encryption is applied to protect contents, then content security is improved, but sender and recipient anonymity deteriorates because header information reveals communication details
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a trusted third party (anonymization server) as an intermediary that receives encrypted emails from senders, anonymizes the header information by replacing sender and recipient addresses with anonymized identifiers, and forwards the anonymized emails to the actual recipients. This mediator preserves content security while achieving sender and recipient anonymity through the anonymization process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the email transmission process into distinct stages: (1) sender encrypts and sends email to anonymization server, (2) anonymization server processes and anonymizes headers while preserving encrypted body, (3) anonymization server forwards to recipient. This segmentation allows each component to perform specific functions - encryption maintains security while the anonymization process protects identity information.
2Loss of information
If multiple encryption layers are applied to anonymize email routing, then sender and recipient anonymity is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The trusted third party acts as a centralized mediator that handles the complex multi-layer encryption and anonymization process. Instead of requiring senders and recipients to implement complex anonymization themselves, the mediator performs these operations, simplifying the overall system architecture while maintaining strong anonymity protections.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs encryption and anonymization actions in advance before the email reaches the final recipient. The sender encrypts the email body and the trusted third party anonymizes the headers in preparation for transmission, so that by the time the email is delivered, both security and anonymity are already established, reducing the complexity burden on the receiving end.
Data Source
AI summary
A sender may generate a primary email including a primary header and a primary body, the primary header including a sender address associated with the sender computing system and the recipient address associated with a recipient client, encrypt at least a part of the primary body to generate a primary encrypted email, encrypt the primary encrypted email to generate an encrypted sender-to-recipient pseudo-body, add a trusted party-to-recipient header to the encrypted sender-to-recipient pseudo-body including a trusted party address of a trusted party and the recipient address associated with the recipient client to generate a trusted party-to-recipient email, encrypt the trusted party-to-recipient email to generate an encrypted trusted party-to-recipient pseudo-body, add a sender-to-trusted party header to the encrypted trusted party-to-recipient pseudo-body including the sender address and the address of the trusted party to generate a sender-to-trusted party email, and send the sender-to-trusted party email to the trusted party.