A survey of query log privacy-enhancing techniques from a policy perspective

ABSTRACT

As popular search engines face the sometimes conflicting interests of protecting privacy while retaining query logs for a variety of uses, numerous technical measures have been suggested to both enhance privacy and preserve at least a portion of the utility of query logs. This article seeks to assess seven of these techniques against three sets of criteria: (1) how well the technique protects privacy, (2) how well the technique preserves the utility of the query logs, and (3) how well the technique might be implemented as a user control. A user control is defined as a mechanism that allows individual Internet users to choose to have the technique applied to their own query logs.

REFERENCES

• 1: Adar, E. 2007. User 4XXXXX9: anonymizing query logs. In Proceedings of the 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW'07). IW3C2, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
• 2: Eugene Agichtein , Eric Brill , Susan Dumais, Improving web search ranking by incorporating user behavior information, Proceedings of the 29th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, August 06-11, 2006, Seattle, Washington, USA [doi>10.1145/1148170.1148177]
• 3: Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. 2008. Opinion on data protection issues related to search engines. http://www.cbpweb.nl/downloads_int/Opinie%20WP29%20zoekmachines.pdf.
• 4: Ask.com. 2007. Ask.com puts you in control of your search privacy with the launch of ‘AskEraser’. http://www.irconnect.com/ask/pages/news_releases.html?d=132847.
• 5: Barbaro, M. and Zeller, T. 2006. A face is exposed for AOL searcher no. 4417749. In The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ex=1312776000.
• 6: Bar-Ilan, J. 2007. Position paper: Access to query logs—an academic researcher's point of view. In Proceedings of the 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW'07). IW3C2, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
• 7: Steven M. Beitzel , Eric C. Jensen , Abdur Chowdhury , David Grossman , Ophir Frieder, Hourly analysis of a very large topically categorized web query log, Proceedings of the 27th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, July 25-29, 2004, Sheffield, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/1008992.1009048]
• 8: Center for Democracy & Technology. 2006. Digital search & seizure: Updating privacy protections to keep pace with technology. http://www.cdt.org/publications/digital-search-and-seizure.pdf.
• 9: Center for Democracy & Technology. 2007. Search privacy practices: A work in progress. http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20070808searchprivacy.pdf.
• 10: Cranor, L. 2007. Making privacy disclosures to consumers more usable. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/ehavioral/presentations/6lcranor.pdf.
• 11: Silviu Cucerzan , Ryen W. White, Query suggestion based on user landing pages, Proceedings of the 30th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, July 23-27, 2007, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/1277741.1277953]
• 12: Hang Cui , Ji-Rong Wen , Jian-Yun Nie , Wei-Ying Ma, Probabilistic query expansion using query logs, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on World Wide Web, May 07-11, 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA [doi>10.1145/511446.511489]
• 13: European Parliament. 1995. Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:NOT.
• 14: European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. 2006. Directive on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC. http://www.ispai.ie/DR%20as%20published%20OJ%2013-04-06.pdf.
• 15: Fleischer, P. 2007. Google response to Data Protection Working Party. http://64.233.179.110/blog_resources/Google_response_Working_Party_06_2007.pdf.
• 16: Foley, J. 2007. Are Google searches private? An originalist interpretation of the fourth amendment in online communication cases. Berkeley Techn. Law J. 22, 1, 447--472.
• 17: Google. 2007. Google search privacy: Personalized search. http://youtube.com/watch?v=UsUBnPRtTbI.
• 18: Government Accountability Office. 2007. B-308603, presidential signing statements accompanying the fiscal year 2006 appropriations acts. http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/308603.htm.
• 19: Howe, D. and Nissenbaum, H. 2008. TrackMeNot: Resisting surveillance in web search. In On the Identity Trail: Privacy, Anonymity and Identity in a Networked Society. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, To appear.
• 20: Thorsten Joachims, Optimizing search engines using clickthrough data, Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, July 23-26, 2002, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/775047.775067]
• 21: Rosie Jones , Ravi Kumar , Bo Pang , Andrew Tomkins, "I know what you did last summer": query logs and user privacy, Proceedings of the sixteenth ACM conference on Conference on information and knowledge management, November 06-10, 2007, Lisbon, Portugal [doi>10.1145/1321440.1321573]
• 22: Rosie Jones , Benjamin Rey , Omid Madani , Wiley Greiner, Generating query substitutions, Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, May 23-26, 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland [doi>10.1145/1135777.1135835]
• 23: Ravi Kumar , Jasmine Novak , Bo Pang , Andrew Tomkins, On anonymizing query logs via token-based hashing, Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web, May 08-12, 2007, Banff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/1242572.1242657]
• 24: Microsoft. 2007. Microsoft privacy principles for live search and online ad targeting. http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/7/f/37f14671-ddee-499b-a794-077b3673f186/Microsoft%E2%80%99s%20Privacy%20Principles%20for%20Live%20Search%20and%20Online%20Ad%20Targeting.pdf.
• 25: Microsoft. 2006. Microsoft live labs: Accelerating search in academic research. http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/RFPs/Search_2006_RFP.aspx.
• 26: Nakashima, E. 2006. AOL takes down site with users' search data. The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080701150.html.
• 27: Filip Radlinski , Thorsten Joachims, Query chains: learning to rank from implicit feedback, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery in data mining, August 21-24, 2005, Chicago, Illinois, USA [doi>10.1145/1081870.1081899]
• 28: Rasch, M. 2006. Google's data minefield. In The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/31/google_subpoena_us_government/.
• 29: Reimer, J. 2007. Your ISP may be selling your web clicks. Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070315-your-isp-may-be-selling-your-web-clicks.html.
• 30: Roberts, C. 2007. Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act. In El Paso Times. http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_6685679.
• 31: Amanda Spink , Bernard J. Jansen , Dietmar Wolfram , Tefko Saracevic, From E-Sex to E-Commerce: Web Search Changes, Computer, v.35 n.3, p.107-109, March 2002 [doi>10.1109/2.989940]
• 32: Amanda Spink , H. Cenk Ozmultu, Characteristics of question format web queries: an exploratory study, Information Processing and Management: an International Journal, v.38 n.4, p.453-471, July 2002 [doi>10.1016/S0306-4573(01)00042-5]
• 33: Amanda Spink , Dietmar Wolfram , Major B. J. Jansen , Tefko Saracevic, Searching the Web: the public and their queries, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v.52 n.3, p.226-234, Feb. 1, 2001 [doi>10.1002/1097-4571(2000)9999:9999<::AID-ASI1591>3.3.CO;2-I]
• 34: Sweeney, L. 2000. Uniqueness of simple demographics in the U.S. population, LIDAP-WP4. Laboratory for International Data Privacy, Carnegie Mellon University.
• 35: Latanya Sweeney, k-anonymity: a model for protecting privacy, International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, v.10 n.5, p.557-570, October 2002 [doi>10.1142/S0218488502001648]
• 36: United States Department of Health and Human Services. 2005. Protection of human subjects. http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.htm.
• 37: Xiong, L. and Agichtein, E. 2007. Towards privacy-preserving query log publishing. In Proceedings of the 16th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW'07). IW3C2, Banff, Alberta, Canada.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.1 Public Policy Issues
          Subjects: Privacy

Additional Classification:
  A. General Literature
  A.1 INTRODUCTORY AND SURVEY

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.1 Public Policy Issues
          Subjects: Regulation; Ethics
  K.5 LEGAL ASPECTS OF COMPUTING
      K.5.2 Governmental Issues
          Subjects: Regulation

General Terms:
Design, Legal Aspects

Keywords:
Privacy, log, policy, query, search