Privacy preserving data collection and analysis

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more memory elements including instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to perform operations including:
• receiving, by the one or more processors and from a content distribution system, a message comprising (i) a probabilistic data structure representing a set of content items that should not be provided to a user device, (ii) content item data for content items available to be provided to the user device, and (iii) a request to determine whether any content item data is invalid based on the probabilistic data structure;
• querying, by the one or more processors, the probabilistic data structure to determine whether the probabilistic data structure encodes an identifier for a given content item among the content items;
• determining, by the one or more processors using based on querying the probabilistic data structure, that the content item data for the given content item is invalid because the probabilistic data structure encodes the identifier for the given content item;
• and
• in response to determining that the content item data for the given content item is invalid, removing, by the one or more processors and from the content item data, the content item data for the given content item that was determined to be invalid;
• and
• preventing, by the one or more processors, distribution of the given content item in response to a request to provide content to the user device.

A non-transitory computer storage medium encoded with instructions that when executed by a distributed computing system cause the distributed computing system to perform operations comprising:

• receiving, by one or more processors and from a content distribution system, a message comprising (i) a probabilistic data structure representing a set of content items that should not be provided to a user device, (ii) content item data for content items available to be provided to the user device, and (iii) a request to determine whether any content item data is invalid based on the probabilistic data structure;
• querying, by the one or more processors, the probabilistic data structure to determine whether the probabilistic data structure encodes an identifier for a given content item among the content items;
• determining, by the one or more processors based on querying the probabilistic data structure, that the content item data for the given content item is invalid because the probabilistic data structure encodes the identifier for the given content item;
• and
• in response to determining that the content item data for the given content item is invalid, removing, by the one or more processors and from the content item data, the content item data for the given content item that was determined to be invalid;
• and
• preventing, by the one or more processors, distribution of the given content item in response to a request to provide content to the user device.