Project

openPDS/ SaferAnswers: Protecting the privacy of metadata

Copyright

Human Dynamics group

Human Dynamics group

Groups

In a world where sensors, data storage, and processing power are too cheap to meter, how do you ensure that users can realize the full value of their data while protecting their privacy? openPDS is a field-tested, personal metadata management framework that allows individuals to collect, store, and give fine-grained access to their metadata to third parties. SafeAnswers is a new and practical way of protecting the privacy of metadata at an individual level. SafeAnswers turns a hard anonymization problem into a more tractable security one. It allows services to ask questions whose answers are calculated against the metadata, instead of trying to anonymize individuals' metadata. Together, openPDS and SafeAnswers provide a new way of dynamically protecting personal metadata.