Examining Random-Number Generation Flaws And Privacy Implications

Exploring Random-Number Generation Flaws And Their Privacy Impact

Jun 25, 2002 •

1 min read

Most of us register aliases, like John Doe and Juxta Position, on the Internet in return for information and services. The use of aliases maintains our privacy, reduces spam and thwarts. . . Most of us register aliases, like John Doe and Juxta Position, on the Internet in return for information and services. The use of aliases maintains our privacy, reduces spam and thwarts probes looking for a more detailed Web user profile. Now there's a privacy-protection scheme that aims to eliminate the need for aliases. But it's not as comprehensive as it appears.

IBM's Privacy Research Institute recently revealed techniques that aim to preserve individual privacy while giving e-businesses information to generate data models. These techniques scramble or Ã'randomizeÃ" private information and reconstruct data distributions at an aggregate level to perform data mining. This means that Web site administrators and merchants can use scrambled data without knowing the underlying private information.

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