Anonymization Techniques for URLs and Filenames

Appeared in Technical Report UCSC-CRL-03-05.

Abstract

Investigating the behavior of computer and network systems often involves collecting and analyzing traces of user activity. Because traces are expensive to store and collect, and because it is desirable to replicate experimental results, it is common to publish trace data for use by other researchers. To maintain the privacy of users, traces are usually anonymized before publication. We discuss prior methods for anonymizing such traces, including weaknesses and drawbacks in those methods. We then present a new method that can anonymize strings such as URLs while preserving a maximum amount of information useful to researchers.

Publication date:
September 2003

Authors:
Geoff Kuenning
Ethan L. Miller

Projects:
Secure File and Storage Systems

Available media

Full paper text: PDF

Bibtex entry

@inproceedings{kuenning-crltr03,
  author       = {Geoff Kuenning and Ethan L. Miller},
  title        = {Anonymization Techniques for {URLs} and Filenames},
  booktitle    = {Technical Report UCSC-CRL-03-05},
  month        = sep,
  year         = {2003},
}