Preserving privacy of digital communication information
Method for verifying that an item of information relating to an issuer has been registered correctly by a receiving entity while preserving the issuer's privacy, which method includes the following steps: a) the information relating to the issuer is coded in an issuing entity and said coding is sent to the receiving entity; b) the receiving entity generates a content test on the basis of the information coded in step a), and the content test is subsequently sent to the issuing entity; and c) the issuer verifies that the content test corresponds to the information which has been coded.
1. A computer implemented method for verifying that information in a sender entity has been correctly recorded in a receiver entity, while preserving privacy by not revealing the information from the sender entity, comprising the following steps:
a) encoding the information in the sender entity computer and sending the encoded sender information from the sender entity computer to a receiver entity computer;
b) generating with the receiver entity computer a proof of content based on the encoded sender information, and sending the proof of content to the sender entity computer from the receiver entity computer;
c) verifying information with the sender entity computer, to thereby make a verification, that the proof of content received corresponds with the information in the sender entity computer by comparing values of the proof of content received with values of a proof of content known in advance that correspond to the verified information;
d) generating in the sender entity computer a further encoding of the information in the sender entity computer, and sending said further encoding to the receiver entity computer; and
e) computing a similarity proof demonstrating that the encoding from step a) and the further encoding from step d) have been done with the information in the sender entity computer, without revealing the information from the sender entity, and sending said similarity proof to the receiver entity.
2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising the following additional step:
f) the receiver entity verifying with the receiver entity computer that the similarity proof from step e) corresponds with the encoding in step a) and the further encoding in step d).
3. The computer implemented method according to claim 1 , wherein the encoding from step a) has deterministic properties.
4. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the encoding from step a) has probabilistic properties.
5. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the encoding from step d) has probabilistic properties.
6. The computer implemented method according to claim 3 , further comprising using an exponent value fixed from the values of the sender entity computer and the message to make an encoding with probabilistic properties to have deterministic properties.
7. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein both the encoding used in step a) and the further encoding used in step d) have homomorphic properties.
8. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , further comprising using a common parameter in the encoding of step a) and the further encoding in step d), wherein the common parameter is a public key.
9. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the similarity proof of step e) is a zero-knowledge proof proving that the encoding of step a) is the re-encoding of the further encoding of step d).
10. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the information in the sender entity computer that is encoded in step a) and further encoded in step d) is composed respectively by a set of individual encodings from parts of said information in the sender entity computer.
11. The computer implemented method according to claim 9 , wherein the similarity proof from step e) is composed by a set of similarity proofs between the set of individual encodings obtained in step a) and the set of individual further encodings obtained in step d).
12. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the proof of content from step b) is obtained by applying to the information encoded in step a) a one-way function from the group comprising SHA1, SHA2 or MD5.
13. The computer implemented method according to claim 2 , wherein the proof of content from step b) is generated from the encoding of the information encoded in step a).
14. The computer implemented method according to claim 13 , wherein the encoding is a cryptographic function using a secret key S assigned to the receiver entity, from the group consisting of a symmetric encryption and a MAC function.
15. The computer implemented method according to claim 9 , wherein the proof of content generated in step b) is composed by the set of proofs of content generated from the individual encodings from step a).
16. The computer implemented method according to claim 15 , wherein the proof of content generated in step b) is the result of applying the set of proofs of content generated from the individual encodings from step a).
17. The computer implemented method according to claim 1 , further comprising an additional step g) where the values of the proofs of content for the verified information are generated and sent to the sender entity computer.
18. The computer implemented method according to claim 4 , further comprising performing an additional step h) for partial decoding of the information in the sender entity computer that was encoded in step a) before generating the proof of content.