Privacy Protection Process for User Profile Segmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for protecting user privacy in networks are inadequate as they fail to prevent identification through combinations of non-explicit personal data, which can be used to reveal a user's identity when accessed by malicious analytic engines, even after removing explicit identifiers.
Innovation Solution
A process that analyzes user profiles to identify potential combinations of personal data that could uniquely identify a user, generates alternative identifiers, and partitions the profile to minimize risk, ensuring only safe segments are shared with analytic engines, using a discovery manager module to formulate and test queries against public data sources and an identifier statistics database.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If explicit identifiers are removed from user data before analysis, then user privacy is partially protected, but combinations of non-explicit personal data can still be used to identify users through malicious analytic engines
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments user profiles into multiple parts or views, where each segment contains a subset of personal data attributes. This segmentation prevents analytic engines from accessing complete user profiles that could be used for identification through data combination, while still allowing analysis of individual segments for business intelligence purposes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary component (profile manager or gateway) that sits between the user profiles and analytic engines. This intermediary controls and filters what data is exposed to analytic engines, preventing direct access to combinations of personal data that could lead to user identification while still enabling necessary analysis functions.
2Loss of information
If more personal data is collected and analyzed, then better business intelligence is obtained, but higher risk of user identification and privacy breach occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different privacy protection levels to different data attributes or user segments. Sensitive attributes that could contribute to identification are protected with higher security measures or restricted access, while less sensitive attributes can be freely analyzed. This allows maximizing information availability for analysis while minimizing privacy breach risk through differentiated protection strategies.
Data Source
AI summary
Process for protecting the privacy of a user (1) in a network to which said user is connected through his terminal (2), said user having a profile that comprise personal data of said user, at least one of said personal data being explicit identifiers of said user, said process providing for: analysing the profile of said user to build a set of possible combinations of personal data that are susceptible to allow together identification of said user; formulating a set of corresponding queries for each of said combinations; sending said queries to publicly available data sources (7); parsing responses from said data sources to said queries to check the presence in said responses of explicit identifiers of at least k users in the network, including explicit identifiers of said user, k being an integer; storing combinations whose corresponding set of queries trigger responses that contain explicit identifiers of less than k users; partitioning the profile of the user (1) into segments for separating in said profile personal data that are comprised together in said stored combinations.