Targeted delivery of informational content with privacy protection
First Claim
1. A method for enabling targeted information retrieval while protecting consumer privacy, the method comprising:
- (a) providing a plurality of elements of information;
(b) specifying a negotiant function designed to accept a plurality of elements of data associated with a consumer as input and produce an information request as output, said information request designating at least one element of information to present to the consumer from among a plurality of elements of information; and
(c) distributing the negotiant function to a consumer for execution by said consumer.
22 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for enabling use of detailed consumer profiles for the purposes of targeted information delivery while protecting these profiles from disclosure to information providers or hostile third parties are disclosed herein. Rather than gathering data about a consumer in order to decide which information to send her, an information provider makes use of a client-side executable software module called a negotiant function. The negotiant function acts as a client-side proxy to protect consumer data, and it also directs the targeting of information, requesting items of information from the information provider that are tailored to the profile provided by the consumer.
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Citations
23 Claims
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1. A method for enabling targeted information retrieval while protecting consumer privacy, the method comprising:
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(a) providing a plurality of elements of information;
(b) specifying a negotiant function designed to accept a plurality of elements of data associated with a consumer as input and produce an information request as output, said information request designating at least one element of information to present to the consumer from among a plurality of elements of information; and
(c) distributing the negotiant function to a consumer for execution by said consumer. - View Dependent Claims (2)
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3. A method for enabling targeted information retrieval while protecting consumer privacy, the method comprising:
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(a) receiving a negotiant function for execution, said negotiant function designed to produce an information request as output, the information request designating at least one element of information from among a plurality of elements of information; and
(b) executing said negotiant function to generate the information request. - View Dependent Claims (4, 5, 6)
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7. A method for enabling targeted information retrieval while protecting consumer privacy by processing aggregated requests, the method comprising:
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(a) distributing a negotiant function for execution to a plurality of consumers, the negotiant function designed to produce an information request as output;
(b) receiving a plurality of information requests, a first information request of the plurality of information requests associated with a first consumer and obtained by applying a first negotiant function to an element of data associated with the first consumer, a second information request of the plurality of information requests associated with a second consumer and obtained by applying a second negotiant function to an element of data associated with the second consumer. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)
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18. A method for targeted information retrieval while protecting consumer privacy by comparing blinded ciphertexts, the method comprising:
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(a) distributing a negotiant function for execution to a plurality of consumers, the negotiant function designed to produce an information request as output;
(b) receiving a request pair in response to the negotiant function, the request pair comprising a consumer identifier and the information request and a first random encryption factor, the information request encrypted with the first public key and the first random encryption factor having a first underlying plaintext;
(c) constructing a first plurality of information pairs, the first plurality of information pairs having a first sequence, each of the first plurality of information pairs comprising an element identifier and an element of information encrypted with a second public key and a second random encryption factor;
(d) applying a mix network to the first plurality of information pairs to obtain a second plurality of information pairs, the second plurality of information pairs having a second sequence comprising the first sequence permuted by a random secret permutation, each of the second plurality of request pairs comprising the element identifier encrypted with a third public key and a third random encryption factor and the element of information re-encrypted with the third public key and the third random encryption factor, the element identifier encrypted with the third public key and the third random encryption factor having a second underlying plaintext; and
(e) performing a distributed plaintext equality test to identify at least one of the second plurality of request pairs in which the second underlying plaintext is identical to the first underlying plaintext.
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Specification