Privacy Gateway Packet Masking for Network Privacy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing communication protocols, such as HTTPS, leave identifying information unencrypted, allowing monitoring devices to track user devices and premises, compromising network privacy despite the use of anonymity networks and encryption.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a privacy gateway that decrypts, modifies, and re-encrypts data packets to replace identifying information with its own, acting as a man-in-the-middle between user devices and external computing devices to mask the user's identity and location.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If encryption is used to protect data in transit, then data confidentiality is improved, but identifying information remains unencrypted allowing tracking
Solution Approach 1:
A privacy gateway is introduced as an intermediary component between the client and server. The gateway decrypts incoming encrypted packets, removes or modifies identifying information (such as IP addresses, device identifiers, and location data), and re-encrypts the modified data before forwarding it to the destination. This mediator approach allows the system to maintain encryption benefits while eliminating tracking vulnerabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts identifying information from encrypted data packets at the privacy gateway. Specifically, fields such as source IP addresses, destination IP addresses, device identifiers, and location information are identified and removed or replaced with anonymized data. This extraction process eliminates the tracking capability while preserving the essential communication functionality.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If anonymity networks are used to hide user identity, then privacy is improved, but communication protocols still require unencrypted data fields
Solution Approach 1:
The privacy gateway acts as a protocol-compatible intermediary that translates between encrypted anonymous communication and standard protocols requiring unencrypted fields. It maintains the appearance of standard protocol compliance while injecting anonymized data in place of identifying information, thus achieving both anonymity and protocol compatibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameters of data packets by substituting identifying information with anonymized placeholders. IP addresses are replaced with anonymized IP ranges, device identifiers are replaced with generic device types, and location data is replaced with anonymized geographic regions. These parameter changes maintain protocol structure while removing identifying characteristics.
Data Source
AI summary
A privacy gateway may communicate with user devices located at a plurality of premises. The privacy gateway may receive a data packet, from one of the user devices, indicating destinations, such as other computing devices, located external to the premises. The privacy gateway may decrypt at least a portion of the data packet to determine that at least a portion of data in the packet is associated with the user device. The privacy gateway may remove the data associated with the user device from the data packet and replace the removed data with data associated with the privacy gateway. The privacy gateway may send the data packet with the replaced data to a destination device. The privacy gateway may receive a response to the data packet from the destination device. The privacy gateway may encrypt a portion of the response and send the response to the user device.