For your friendly neighborhood private investigators at Caveat Research, utilizing the utmost discretion in the course of our investigations is a key element in why our business and legal clients come to us for assistance. Maintaining this confidentiality presents an interesting challenge when using open access sources such as the internet.

Even basic search tools such as Google.com can store data indefinitely on specific users including sites visited and terms searched. Likewise virtually all decent internet hosting companies gather information on site visitors including I.P. addresses. In addition to this passive tracking, there are also extremely sensitive circumstances (competitive intelligence, litigation, etc.) where an opposing party is keeping an eye our for our sort of sleuthing.

It appears that maintaining the confidentiality of such sensitive searches is going to get just a bit easier in the near future thanks to two professors at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. According to an article appearing in the May issue of the indispensable M.I.T. Technology Review, these scientists, in the interest of personal privacy, are developing a new method of masking internet searches:

...for those who want to search medical, legal, and other potentially sensitive sites but don’t want anybody to know what they’re looking for, computer researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel, have developed a new search system.

When a user conducts a search ... the system generates extra, decoy queries...to mask the user’s true interests. That may sound suspiciously like Internet saboteurs’ methods for flooding websites.

“Yes, it does generate more traffic,” says Yuval Elovici, who created the system with Bracha Shapira, “but with no malicious intent. That is the price you pay for privacy.”

Elovici and Shapira are currently using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website to test their system, which could be available for public use later this year.

Very interesting.

-- MDT