Method and apparatus for privacy protected clustering of user interest profiles

A user device comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to act as:
• a profile transformation module configured to:
• obtain semantic terms corresponding to at least one interest profile segment based on interaction with a semantic metadata database coupled to the user device, wherein the semantic terms are obtained from amongst one or more semantic terms provided in the semantic metadata database;
• and
• transform each of the at least one interest profile segment into at least one semantic representation;
• and
• a cluster identifier module configured to assign a cluster identifier to each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the at least one semantic representation, wherein the cluster identifier is generated using locality sensitive hashing technique.

A non-transient computer-readable medium having embodied thereon a computer program for executing a method of privacy protected clustering of interest profiles of end users, the method comprising:

• generating at least one interest profile segment based on an interest profile of an end user;
• obtaining semantic terms corresponding to the at least one interest profile segment based on interaction with a semantic metadata database coupled to a user device of the end user, wherein the semantic terms are obtained from amongst one or more semantic terms provided in the semantic metadata database;
• transforming each of the at least one interest profile segment into at least one semantic representation;
• and
• assigning a cluster identifier to each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the at least one semantic representation, wherein the cluster identifiers are generated using locality sensitive hashing technique.