[privacy] Should privacy mean obfuscation?

["Vincent TOUBIANA" <toubiana () enst fr>]

Since « Privacy can no longer mean anonymity » maybe we should reconsider
obfuscation solutions to protect privacy. TrackMeNot is a Firefox
extension that generates queries to search engines to protect web-search
privacy through « noise and obfuscation ». When TrackMeNot was released,
it has been very criticized, specially by security specialist Bruce
Schneier.
Nevertheless, obfuscation tools have been improved ; TrackMeNot has been
updated and I develop a similar tools with many improvements. Maybe we
should start to consider them as a viable solution to protect (or at least
enforce) web-search privacy :
1)      Obfuscation can be compliant with searches personalization while
anonymization cannot.
2)      It can be used even when proxies cannot (consider the Google OS : Android)
3)      It's compliant with services that require user identification while
anonymization cannot (consider the GReader case)
4)      It is more user friendly than anonymization.

I’d like have your opinion on obfuscation methods, do you also think
that’s a good solution ?

If you could have a look on my extension (SquiggleSR), I’ll appreciate any
feedbacks (in fact, I need some reviews for the Firefox nomination
process).


Best Regards


TrackMeNot : http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/
SquiggleSR : http://squigglesr.free.fr





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