System and method for ensuring anonymity of user travel and navigation data through hashing
View Patent ↗For a segment of a route, a navigation data gathering system and method may progressively increment the precision of data analysis in proportion to the number of people actively on a route segment. Navigation data may be anonymized to preclude the possibility of correlating navigation data with personal data to track users or infer private information. Further, the system or method may determine if information for a route segment can be used at all based on the number of users of that segment. If the number of users does not exceed a threshold, the information collected on that route may not be used for other purposes. Thus, the system and method may use navigation data related to a busy section of an interstate highway at the level of precision with which the data is gathered, but reduce the level of precision of data available for a rarely used road segment.
1. A computer-implemented method for ensuring anonymity of travel and navigation data, the method comprising: receiving an indication of consent to analyze navigation data; receiving navigation data including a plurality of precise geographic locations at a remote mapping server from a plurality of client computing devices via a computer network, the received plurality of precise geographic locations being represented by map content data stored at the remote mapping server, wherein the precise geographic location includes a variable length; mapping the received plurality of precise geographic locations to a fixed data set that includes a plurality of data bins, wherein the fixed data set includes a fixed length, and wherein mapping the received plurality of precise geographic locations to a fixed data set includes (i) hashing each of the received plurality of precise geographic locations with a hash function, and (ii) mapping each of the plurality of hashed precise geographic locations into a corresponding data bin, to transform the plurality of precise geographic locations into anonymous counts; and identifying an area of interest based on an anonymous count of hashed precise geographic locations within a subset of the plurality of data bins.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the area of interest includes determining if a number of client computing devices having hashed precise geographic locations mapped to the plurality of data bins is greater than a threshold value.
3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising analyzing navigation data corresponding to client computing devices having hashed precise geographic locations mapped to the plurality of data bins that are greater than the threshold value.
4. A mapping system configured to ensure anonymity of travel and navigation data, the system comprising: a remote mapping server including a processor and a memory, the memory including instructions executed on the processor to: receive an indication of consent to analyze navigation data; receive navigation data including a plurality of precise geographic locations at a remote mapping server from a plurality of client computing devices via a computer network, the received plurality of precise geographic locations being represented by map content data stored at the remote mapping server, wherein the precise geographic location includes a variable length; map the received plurality of precise geographic locations to a fixed data set that includes a plurality of data bins, wherein the fixed data set includes a fixed length, and wherein mapping the received plurality of precise geographic locations to a fixed data set includes (i) hashing each of the received plurality of precise geographic locations with a hash function, and (ii) mapping each of the plurality of hashed precise geographic locations into a corresponding data bin, to transform the plurality of precise geographic locations into anonymous counts; and identify an area of interest based on an anonymous count of hashed precise geographic locations within a subset of the plurality of data bins.
5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the instruction to identify the area of interest includes an instruction to determine if a number of client computing devices having hashed precise geographic locations mapped to the plurality of data bins is greater than a threshold value.
6. The system of claim 5 , further comprising an instruction to analyze navigation data corresponding to client computing devices having hashed precise geographic locations mapped to the plurality of data bins that are greater than the threshold value.