Secure Message Encoding System for Website Privacy Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in maintaining privacy while sharing content online, as personal information can be indexed by search engines, archived by robots, and used by advertisers, despite ever-changing privacy policies on social networking websites.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that allows users to post content securely, restricting access to only intended recipients and preventing indexing or use by third parties, using a creator application, security server, and viewer application to encode and decode messages, with features like social graph databases, rules-based engines, and URL-data mapping to control message visibility and access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If users post information on publicly available websites, then communication and information sharing are facilitated, but personal information becomes indexed by search engines and archived by robots
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system that sits between the user's content and the public website infrastructure. This intermediary encrypts content before posting and manages decryption keys, acting as a mediator that enables public posting while preventing unauthorized access. The intermediary system includes components for key generation, encryption, and controlled decryption that resolve the contradiction between public sharing and private control.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the information sharing process into distinct phases: public posting of encrypted content, separate key distribution to authorized recipients, and controlled decryption only by intended audiences. This segmentation allows the content to be publicly visible as ciphertext while the meaningful information remains segmented and protected until proper authorization occurs.
2Reliability
If privacy policies on social networking websites are relied upon, then user privacy may be protected, but policies change frequently reducing reliability
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of relying on website operators to protect user privacy through policies, the patent inverts the approach by giving privacy protection capabilities directly to users. Users generate their own encryption keys and control decryption themselves, making the system reliable regardless of website policy changes. This inversion transfers control from the service provider to the user.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements self-service privacy protection where users independently generate encryption keys, encrypt their own content, and manage key distribution without relying on website privacy policies or third-party intermediaries. This self-service approach ensures consistent privacy protection that isn't affected by external policy changes.
3Ease of operation
If content is made publicly accessible, then communication freedom is enhanced, but control over data usage by third parties is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the state of the content from plaintext to encrypted text, fundamentally altering its usability parameters. The encrypted content can be freely posted and viewed as gibberish text, but the meaningful information parameter remains protected. Only authorized recipients with decryption keys can transform the encrypted content back into usable information, thus controlling data usage while maintaining communication freedom.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and methods for facilitating secure communications on a website are presented. The system comprising a security server configured to receive a secure message from a creator device is disclosed. The security server encodes the received message and sends the encoded message or a representation of the encoded message for posting on the website so that one or more users of the website have the ability to request that the security server make the message available after the encoded message has been decoded.