Quantifying privacy leakage in mobile networks

摘要

A method for profiling user activity in a mobile network, including extracting user identifiers from application sessions identified from a mobile network, analyzing the application sessions to determine session blocks based on shared IP address and a minimum separation time threshold, extracting a traffic marker from the session blocks based on a user identifier, identifying a first portion of the session blocks based on the user identifier, wherein the first portion is associated with first mobile network activities of a user identified by the user identifier, identifying a second portion of the session blocks based on the traffic marker, wherein the second portion is associated with second mobile network activities of the user, and analyzing the first portion and the second portion to determine a measure of a mobile network activity of the user.

主权项

1. A method for profiling user activity in a mobile network, comprising:
identifying, from the mobile network, a plurality of application sessions; extracting, by a computer processor, a plurality of user identifiers from the plurality of application sessions based on a pre-determined criterion; analyzing, by the computer processor, the plurality of application sessions to determine a plurality of session blocks, wherein each session block comprises a plurality of application sessions sharing an IP address and is defined based on a minimum separation time with any other session block sharing the IP address; extracting, by the computer processor, a traffic marker from the plurality of session blocks based on a user identifier of the plurality of user identifiers, wherein extracting the traffic marker comprises:
determining a measure of co-occurrence in the plurality of session blocks between the user identifier and a data string; andidentifying the data string as the traffic marker in response to the measure meeting a pre-determined threshold; identifying a first portion of the plurality of the session blocks based on the user identifier, wherein the first portion of the plurality of the session blocks is associated with first mobile network activities of a user identified by the user identifier; identifying a second portion of the plurality of the session blocks based on the traffic marker, wherein the second portion of the plurality of the session blocks is associated with second mobile network activities of the user; and analyzing, by the computer processor, the first portion and the second portion of the plurality of the session blocks to determine a measure of a mobile network activity of the user.