VPN Link Risk Scoring for Pre-Emptive Privacy Warnings
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Users' personal data is exposed online, leading to potential misuse by data gatherers, nefarious entities, and lack of preemptive warnings for privacy or security issues during internet browsing.
Innovation Solution
A privacy security appliance establishes a VPN connection, inspects website responses for privacy or security issues, scores embedded links, and generates a mock webpage with warnings before delivering it to the user, obfuscating identifying information and providing preemptive intercept warnings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If users browse the internet without interception, then browsing speed and accessibility are maintained, but personal data is exposed to tracking and malicious entities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system (browser extension or proxy server) that sits between the user's browser and the internet. This intermediary intercepts web requests and responses, analyzes embedded links for privacy and security risks, and provides warnings to users without blocking legitimate browsing. The intermediary handles the complexity of link analysis and risk assessment, keeping the user interface simple while effectively protecting against data exposure.
2Reliability
If all embedded links are analyzed for privacy issues, then security warning coverage is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of embedded links by extracting and pre-processing link information as web pages are loaded. It identifies all embedded links in advance, retrieves their metadata (such as domain information, privacy policies, and blacklist status), and prepares risk assessments before the user interacts with the page. This preliminary action allows the system to provide instant warnings when users hover over or click links, rather than analyzing everything in real-time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different levels of analysis to different embedded links based on their risk characteristics. High-risk links (those from unknown domains, blacklisted sites, or with suspicious patterns) receive comprehensive analysis including privacy policy retrieval and detailed scoring. Low-risk links from trusted domains may receive simplified assessment. This localized quality approach ensures thorough security checking where needed while reducing processing overhead for safe links.
3Loss of information
If the system provides detailed security warnings for all links, then user awareness of risks is improved, but user experience and browsing flow are disrupted
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides security warnings selectively rather than for every single link. It focuses on displaying warnings for links that pose actual privacy or security risks, while allowing safe links to function without interruption. The warning system uses risk scoring to determine which links require user attention, providing just enough information for users to make informed decisions without overwhelming them with unnecessary alerts for benign content.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs visual indicators such as color-coded warnings to convey security risk levels. Embedded links are highlighted with different colors or icons indicating their risk level (e.g., red for high risk, yellow for moderate risk, green for safe). This visual approach allows users to quickly assess link safety at a glance without reading detailed text warnings, maintaining browsing flow while providing essential security information.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
AI summary
Systems and methods for providing pre-emptive intercept warning for online privacy or security are disclosed. In one embodiment, at a privacy security appliance comprising at least one computer processor, a method for may include: establishing a virtual private network (VPN) connection with a computer application executed by a client device; receiving, over the VPN connection, an internet protocol (e.g., HTTP or HTTPS) request for a website host; communicating the internet protocol request to the website host; receiving a response to the internet protocol request from the website host; inspecting the response for privacy or security issues with embedded links in the response; scoring the embedded links based on the inspection; generating a mock webpage based on the response comprising the scoring for the embedded links; and delivering the mock webpage with the scoring to the application over the VPN. The mock webpage may include links to the embedded links.