Trusted Entity for Privacy-Preserving Content Customization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Websites face challenges in providing customized content to users while protecting their privacy and preferences, as users are hesitant to share personal information due to concerns about data security and privacy.
Innovation Solution
A trusted entity obtains and stores user preferences, such as interests and demographic information, without sharing them with content providers, and customizes content accordingly, ensuring user privacy and anonymity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If websites directly collect user preferences and personal information to customize content, then content personalization is improved, but user privacy security deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a trusted third-party entity that acts as an intermediary between users and websites. This entity collects and stores user preferences securely, then provides customized content to websites without revealing the underlying preferences. The intermediary mechanism enables content personalization while maintaining user privacy through cryptographic techniques and secure multi-party computation.
2Loss of information
If users provide demographic and interest information for customization, then content relevance is improved, but user effort and privacy loss increase
Solution Approach 1:
The trusted entity performs preliminary actions by pre-collecting and storing user preferences in a secure manner before any content delivery occurs. Users provide their information once to the trusted entity, which then handles all subsequent customization operations without requiring users to repeatedly provide information or log into accounts.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service through automated preference management. The trusted entity automatically manages user preferences, performs content customization, and delivers personalized content without requiring active user participation in each interaction. Users simply provide their preferences initially, and the system handles all subsequent operations autonomously.
3Adaptability or versatility
If websites implement account creation and login systems for personalization, then content customization capability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complex account management and preference storage functions from the website system and places them in a separate trusted entity. Websites no longer need to implement their own account creation, login, and preference management systems. Instead, they interact with the trusted entity through simplified interfaces, reducing their system complexity while maintaining full customization capability.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for content customization with security for client preferences are described herein. The techniques describe the customization of content provided by websites according to preferences, such as the interests, “likes” and demographic and/or geographic information of users. Additional techniques describe aspects of keeping the users' preferences secure from the website, so that the users' privacy and anonymity are protected. In one implementation, a “trusted entity” is trusted by users to obtain and store the preferences. Content may be obtained by the trusted entity from a content provider, such as a website. The content may be changed according to the preferences. The content is then provided to the users. In view of the changes made by the trusted entity, the user enjoys a customized version of the content. Additional techniques describe limits to customization, based on permissible customizations and frameworks generated by the content providers.