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US 10,762,238 B2Granted
Ascertaining network devices used with anonymous identifiers
AssigneeT-Mobile USA, Inc.
InventorsRami Al-Kabra, Prem Kumar Bodiga, Noah Dahlstrom, Ruchir Sinha, Jonathan Morrow, Aaron Drake, Chuong Phan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Techniques for identifying certain types of network activity are disclosed, including parsing network traffic to automatically recognize anonymous identifiers. Such techniques may be used to identify and eliminate malicious and/or undesirable network traffic, and to identify topics relevant to a user of a particular network device so that communications to such a user are more likely to relate to a topic of interest to the user.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- monitoring one or more URL transmitted by a cellular device over a cellular network;
- identifying a character string in a URL transmitted by the cellular device as a potential anonymous identifier of the cellular device;
- identifying a first device identifier that uniquely identifies the cellular device;
- identifying in the character string a value of a key variable that is associated with a key/value pair of the character string;
- comparing the key variable associated with the key/value pair with key variables stored in a key variable database;
- determining, as a result of the comparison, that the key variable matches a key variable in the key variable database;
- verifying the potential anonymous identifier as a verified anonymous identifier that identifies the cellular device in accordance with determining that the identified key variable matches a key variable in the key variable database;
- associating the verified anonymous identifier with the first device identifier in accordance with the verification;
- and
- storing the verified anonymous identifier and the first device identifier such that the verified anonymous identifier and the first device identifier are associated with each other.
7 more elements
A system, comprising:
- a processor;
- memory that includes one or more electronic storage media components for storing code instructions that are executable on the processor;
- a communications interface configured to enable communications with a network;
- an anonymous identifier database configured to include at least one device identifier and one anonymous identifier that is associated with the device identifier, the device identifier being a value that uniquely identifies a communications device enabled to communicate over the network, and the anonymous identifier being a value assigned to the communications device;
- and
- an anonymous identifier recognition application stored in the memory, including:
- a URL parser code segment configured to:
- access a URL transmitted over the network from the communications device, and
- detect a character string having a predetermined anonymous identifier format;
- a device identifier extractor code segment configured to identify and extract the device identifier from the communications device and store the device identifier in the anonymous identifier database;
- an anonymous identifier verifier code segment configured to verify the detected character string as a verified anonymous identifier assigned to the communications device in accordance with the identification of the character string as matching the predetermined anonymous identifier format;
- and
- an input/output code segment configured to store a verified anonymous identifier with the device identifier of the communication device in the anonymous identifier database such that the verified anonymous identifier and the device identifier are associated with each other.
10 more elements
One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media including computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, perform the following operations:
- receiving a URL transmitted by a cellular device over a cellular network;
- identifying a URL character string transmitted by the cellular device over the cellular network that matches a predetermined anonymous identifier format;
- verifying the identified URL character string as an anonymous identifier in accordance with the identification of the URL character string as matching the predetermined anonymous identifier format;
- associating the verified identified URL character string with a first device identifier that uniquely identifies the cellular device in accordance with the verification;
- identifying a subject from one or more URL navigated to by the cellular device;
- associating the subject with the first device identifier;
- identifying content related to the subject;
- and
- associating the content related to the subject with the first device identifier, the verified anonymous identifier, or both.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.