Pseudonymizing Sensitive Objects in Online Conversations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Peer-to-peer online text conversations often leave sensitive content unedited on user devices, violating privacy regulations and retention preferences, as users cannot control retention actions on other users' devices, potentially exposing sensitive data.
Innovation Solution
A method that uses pseudonymization to protect sensitive objects in online conversations by identifying and replacing them with pseudonymized-object-holders based on user-specific protection policies, ensuring compliance with legal and geographical regulations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If sensitive data is retained on user devices for communication history, then conversation accessibility is improved, but privacy compliance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts sensitive information from the original message content and stores it separately in a sensitive information database. The original messages are then replaced with placeholder tokens that reference the extracted sensitive data. This separation allows the conversation history to be retained for accessibility while the actual sensitive data can be controlled and purged independently to comply with privacy regulations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copy of sensitive information from the original messages and stores it in a dedicated sensitive information database. The original messages are replaced with placeholder tokens that reference this copied data. This copying mechanism enables the system to maintain conversation accessibility through placeholder references while allowing independent management and purging of the actual sensitive data copies to ensure privacy compliance.
2Reliability
If sensitive objects are replaced with pseudonymized holders, then privacy protection is improved, but data utility deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the sensitive portions of information from messages and replaces them with placeholder tokens, while preserving the non-sensitive context. This selective extraction maintains the utility of messages for understanding conversation flow and context, while protecting privacy by removing or pseudonymizing only the sensitive elements such as personal identifiers and confidential data.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a separate copy of sensitive information in a secure database while replacing it with placeholder tokens in the conversation history. This copying approach preserves data utility by maintaining the structure and referenceability of the data, while the actual sensitive values are protected. The placeholder tokens preserve the positional and contextual information needed for conversation understanding without exposing actual sensitive data.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for protecting content of online conversational content. The method provides for scanning content of an online conversational exchange between a first device and a second device. A sensitive object included in the content of the online conversation exchange is identified, based on object type information accessible from a protection policy included in respective user profiles. A pseudonymized-object-holder is assigned to the identified sensitive object according to the protection policy of the respective user profiles, and the identified sensitive object identified in the content of the online conversation exchange and stored on both the first device and the second device is replaced with a pseudonymized-object-holder, based on the sensitive-object protection policy of the respective user profiles.