Selective use of anonymous proxies
AssigneeRed Hat, Inc.
InventorRichard Ding Li
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for selectively using an anonymous proxy. A user request for content is received. A determination is made as to whether the user request satisfies context criteria. When the user request satisfies the context criteria, the user request is forwarded to an anonymous proxy. When the user request does not satisfy the context criteria, the request is sent directly to a content provider.
Claims21
A method implemented by a computer system programmed to perform the following, comprising:
- receiving, by a client computer system executing a browser application, a user request for content provided by a server, the user request comprising user identifying information;
- using context criteria to determine, by the browser application, whether to send the user request to a remote anonymous proxy, wherein the context criteria comprises one or more privacy laws determined based on a physical location of the server;
- and
- forwarding the user request to the remote anonymous proxy if the user request satisfies the context criteria, wherein the remote anonymous proxy is configured to privatize the user request by altering at least one type of user identifying information.
A non-transitory machine-accessible storage medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform a method comprising:
- receiving, by a client computer system executing a browser application, a user request for content provided by a server, the user request comprising user identifying information;
- using context criteria to determine, by the browser application, whether to send the user request to a remote anonymous proxy, wherein the context criteria comprises one or more privacy laws determined based on a physical location of the server;
- and
- forwarding the user request to the remote anonymous proxy if the user request satisfies the context criteria, wherein the remote anonymous proxy is configured to privatize the user request by altering at least one type of user identifying information.
An apparatus, comprising:
- a memory to store instructions for a browser application;
- and
- a processor, connected to the memory, to execute the instructions, wherein the instructions cause the processor to:
- determine whether to send a user request to a remote anonymous proxy based on context criteria, wherein the determining is done by the browser application, and wherein the context criteria comprises one or more privacy laws determined based on a physical location of a content provider server;
- and
- forward the user request to the remote anonymous proxy if the user request satisfies the context criteria, wherein the remote anonymous proxy is configured to privatize the user request by altering at least one type of user identifying information.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.