US 12,407,523 B2
Privacy-preserving activity aggregation mechanism
David Bruce Turner, Newark, CA (US); Adrian John Isles, Oakland, CA (US); and Philipp Helmut Pfeiffenberger, San Francisco, CA (US)
Assigned to Google LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Appl. No. 17/798,604
Filed by Google LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
PCT Filed Mar. 3, 2021, PCT No. PCT/US2021/020694
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Aug. 10, 2022,
PCT Pub. No. WO2022/186831, PCT Pub. Date Sep. 9, 2022.
Prior Publication US 2023/0163978 A1, May 25, 2023
Int. Cl. H04L 9/32 (2006.01); H04L 9/40 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 9/3263 (2013.01) [H04L 9/3247 (2013.01); H04L 9/3297 (2013.01); H04L 63/0421 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for privacy-preserving web activity monitoring, comprising:
receiving, from an application on a user device of a user, a request for digital content from a domain;
assigning, to the application and at a first time, a randomized cohort constructed based on (i) a randomly selected identifier and (ii) a timestamp indicating the first time at which the randomized cohort was assigned to the application, wherein the randomly selected identifier is also assigned to at least a threshold number of other applications executing on other user devices within a predetermined period of time of the assignment of the randomly selected identifier to the application;
providing, to the application and at the first time, (i) a digitally signed certificate corresponding to the randomly selected identifier and the timestamp and (ii) a unique public key and corresponding unique private key associated with the certificate;
receiving, from the application and at a second time, (i) a second request for digital content from the domain and (ii) a vague identifier corresponding to the randomly selected identifier and a randomized cohort age bucket that indicates a range of ages of cookies that contains the age of the randomized cohort, wherein the age of the randomized cohort is calculated based on a difference between the second time and the first time, and wherein the randomized cohort age bucket obfuscates the age of the randomized cohort;
receiving, from the application and after the second time, subsequent requests for digital content from the domain, wherein each subsequent request includes the vague identifier to anonymize the user; and
providing, to the application, the requested digital content in response to each subsequent request.