A Microsoft research trio has developed an algorithm capable of eliminating user tracking in web search without the overheads of existing technology.
The idea, to be presented next month and titled
Bloom Cookies: Web Search Personalisation without User Tracking, uses a new type of flowery cookies that can tightly-encode user profiles to preserve privacy without cutting off online personalisation services.
"The Bloom Cookies design is inspired by our analysis of a large set of web search logs that shows drawbacks of two profile obfuscation techniques, namely profile generalisation and noise injection, today used by many privacy-preserving personalization systems," the trio wrote in
an abstract explaining the work.
"We find that profile generalisation significantly hurts personalization and fails to protect users from a server linking user sessions over time.
