With cloud-based services now gaining traction and threatening to let companies track people online, Apple Inc. has patented a way to help computer users keep their personal data private.
A post on PatentlyApple.com suggested Apple may likely start implementing this patent —which involves basically polluting a user’s electronic profile— with its iCloud ID.
“The electronic age has given rise to what is now known as thousands of ‘Little Brothers,’ who perform Internet surveillance by collecting information to form electronic profiles about a user not through human eyes or through the lens of a camera but through data collection. This form of Internet surveillance via data collection is often referred to as ‘dataveillance.’ In a sense, thousands of ‘Little Brothers’ or automated programs can monitor virtually every action of users over the Internet. The data about a user can be accumulated and combined with other data about the user to form electronic profiles of the users,” it said.
Apple credited Stephen Carter as the sole inventor of granted patent 8,205,265 which was filed in the fourth quarter of 2011 and published only recently by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
However, it also noted this technology is already being used in some Novell network and proxy server products.
“In fact, the engineer noted in our report isn’t an Apple employee and he’s licensed the technology to Novell in the past. Apple is noted as an assignee of this technology,” it said.
The patent calls for cloning a principal user’s identity, with the clone being assigned “areas of interest” to confuse eavesdroppers.
While data collection is not prevented, it is “intentionally polluted so as to make any data collection about a principal less valuable and less reliable,” PatentlyApple.com said.
The patent said the cloned identity may have faked confidential information assigned or associated with the cloned identity such as date of birth, birthday club, gender, income level, marital status, number and ages of children.
A cloned identity may even be assigned an email account of its own for its own use; a funding source, such as a credit card or debit card; a phone number with a voice mail; or even a postal account, such as a Post Office (P.O.) box.
On the other hand, the cloning service may also take action to prevent its detection.
“For example, the cloning service may not be active when the principal is on the network and performing actions or transactions. Similarly, if the principal is not likely to be online on the network, then the cloning service is also configured to not be online,” PatentlyApple.com said.
It added the principal may manually instruct the cloning service to be down on certain dates and times. — TJD, GMA News
source: gmanetwork.com
