FURI | Spring 2018

Personalized Browser History Anonymization

Although tools such as Tor, VPN (Virtual Private Network), and HTTPS protect the privacy of a user’s browsing, they all come at a significant cost in utility. This FURI project attempts to better handle this tradeoff between privacy and utility. Given a user’s browsing history, the goal is to increase the privacy protection of the user’s identity in a personalized manner. This is accomplished by adding well-chosen links that enhance the user’s privacy while preserving the history’s utility. Future work includes choosing better privacy-preserving URLs through determinantal point processes and learning a way to better categorize and compare URLs.