Method for privacy protection
AssigneeF-Secure Corporation
InventorsChristine Bejerasco, Karmina Aquino, Heikki Hannikainen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
There is provided a method for privacy protection including: intercepting at least part of network traffic from a client device; analysing network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify any elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process; analysing the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify any tracking fields comprising user specific data; selecting random tracking field data accepted by the website visitor tracking process and replacing the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the selected random tracking field data respectively.
Claims14
A method for privacy protection comprising, at an apparatus:
- intercepting at least part of network traffic from a client device;
- analysing network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;
- analysing the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data;
- and
- prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue, randomly selecting tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and replacing, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively,
- wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.
An apparatus for use in a communications network, the apparatus comprising:
- a processor arranged to intercept at least part of network traffic from a client device used in the communications network;
- a processor arranged to analyse network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;
- a processor arranged to analyse the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data;
- and
- a processor arranged to randomly select tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and to replace, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively, prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue,
- wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.
A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon computer readable code which, when executed by a computer, causes a computer to perform a method comprising:
- intercepting at least part of network traffic from a client device;
- analysing network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;
- analysing the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data;
- and
- prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue, randomly selecting tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and replacing, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively,
- wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.