PROTECTING CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION IN A DATABASE FOR ENABLING TARGETED ADVERTISING IN A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

摘要

Protecting a database against the deduction of confidential values contained therein is accomplished by partitioning the database into public and private values (202), some of which public values are deemed more important than others (203). The private attribute values are electronically processed (204-226) to reduce any high correlation between the public values and the private values. Specifically the processor partitions the database (204-210) into safe tuples and unsafe tuples, which unsafe tuples have high correlative public values (216-218). The processor then selectively combines the public attribute values of the tuples (220) to camouflage such tuples from deduction of their private attribute values beyond a threshold level of uncertainty (226).