Enforcing anonymity in the auditing of electronic documents
View Patent ↗Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for anonymizing electronic documents. In accordance with one or more embodiments, structurally-similar electronic documents can be identified among a group of electronic documents (e.g., e-mail messages, documents containing HTML formatting, etc.). A hash function can be specifically tailored to identify the similarly structured documents. The structurally-similar electronic documents can be grouped into a same equivalence class. Masked anonymized document samples can be generated from the structurally-similar electronic documents utilizing the same equivalence class, thereby ensuring that the anonymized document samples when viewed as a part of an audit remain anonymous. An online process is provided to guarantee k-anonymity of the users over the entire lifetime of the auditing process. An auditor's productivity can be measured based on the amount of content revealed to the auditor within the samples he is assigned. The auditor's productivity is maximized while ensuring anonymization over the lifetime of the audit.
1. A method for anonymizing electronic documents, comprising:
identifying structurally-similar electronic documents among a plurality of electronic documents;
grouping said structurally-similar electronic documents into a same equivalence class;
generating masked anonymized document samples from said structurally-similar electronic documents by determining that one or more parts of said structurally-similar electronic documents are variable and masking the one or more parts to produce one or more masked anonymized document samples comprising at least some hidden content and at least some non-hidden content;
providing, for presentation to one or more auditors, at least one of said masked anonymized document samples;
measuring a first productivity of a first auditor of the one or more auditors based on an amount of non-hidden content of a first portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said first auditor; and
measuring a second productivity of a second auditor of the one or more auditors based on an amount of non-hidden content of a second portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said second auditor, wherein said first productivity of said first auditor is greater than said second productivity of said second auditor based upon the amount of non-hidden content of said first portion of said masked anonymized document samples revealed to said first auditor exceeding the amount of non-hidden content of said second portion of said masked anonymized document samples revealed to said second auditor.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said electronic documents comprise e-mail messages.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein said electronic documents are configured from a mark-up language.
4. The method of claim 1 , said grouping comprising grouping a first set of electronic documents into a first equivalence class responsive to:
determining that said electronic documents of said first set meet a similarity threshold.
5. The method of claim 1 , comprising continuously delivering said masked anonymized document samples so that over time, an anonymity of each user associated with a masked anonymized document among said masked anonymized document samples is preserved over an entire lifetime of an audit.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein said providing is based upon a capacity of each of said one or more auditors.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said structurally-similar electronic documents among said plurality of electronic documents are identified utilizing a hash function tailored to identify similarly structured electronic documents,
wherein said hash function generates at least one message signature for each electronic document of said plurality of electronic documents by:
parsing an electronic document to a Document Object Model (DOM) tree;
pruning the DOM tree to generate a pruned DOM tree comprising textual leaves comprising non-empty alphanumeric strings; and
signing the pruned DOM tree to generate a message signature for the electronic document,
wherein said hash function generates a same message signature for a first electronic document and a second electronic document that have a same DOM structure but different textual leaves.
8. A system, implemented at least in part via a processor, comprising:
an identifying module for identifying structurally-similar electronic documents among a plurality of electronic documents;
a grouping module for grouping said structurally-similar electronic documents into a same equivalence class;
a generating module for generating masked anonymized document samples from said structurally-similar electronic documents by determining that one or more parts of said structurally-similar electronic documents are variable and masking the one or more parts to produce one or more masked anonymized document samples comprising at least some hidden content and at least some non-hidden content; and
a measuring module for:
measuring a first productivity of a first auditor based on an amount of non-hidden content of a first portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said first auditor; and
measuring a second productivity of a second auditor based on an amount of non-hidden content of a second portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said second auditor, wherein said first productivity of said first auditor is greater than said second productivity of said second auditor based upon the amount of non-hidden content of said first portion of said masked anonymized document samples revealed to said first auditor exceeding the amount of non-hidden content of said second portion of said masked anonymized document samples revealed to said second auditor.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein said electronic documents comprise e-mail messages.
10. The system of claim 8 , wherein said electronic documents are configured from a mark-up language.
11. The system of claim 8 , comprising a delivery module for providing, for presentation to one or more auditors, at least one of said masked anonymized document samples.
12. The system of claim 8 , comprising a delivery module for continuously delivering said masked anonymized document samples so that over time, an anonymity of each user associated with a masked anonymized document among said masked anonymized document samples is preserved over an entire lifetime of an audit.
13. The system of claim 11 , wherein said providing is based upon a capacity of each of said one or more auditors.
14. The system of claim 8 , wherein said structurally-similar electronic documents among said plurality of electronic documents are identified utilizing a hash function tailored to identify similarly structured electronic documents,
wherein said hash function generates at least one message signature for each electronic document of said plurality of electronic documents by:
parsing an electronic document to a Document Object Model (DOM) tree;
pruning the DOM tree to generate a pruned DOM tree comprising textual leaves comprising non-empty alphanumeric strings; and
signing the pruned DOM tree to generate a message signature for the electronic document.
15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that when executed perform operations comprising:
identifying structurally-similar electronic documents among a plurality of electronic documents;
grouping said structurally-similar electronic documents into a same equivalence class;
generating masked anonymized document samples from said structurally-similar electronic documents by determining that one or more parts of said structurally-similar electronic documents are variable and masking the one or more parts to produce one or more masked anonymized document samples comprising at least some hidden content and at least some non-hidden content;
providing, for presentation to one or more auditors, at least one of said masked anonymized document samples;
measuring a first productivity of a first auditor of the one or more auditors based on an amount of non-hidden content of a first portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said first auditor; and
measuring a second productivity of a second auditor of the one or more auditors based on an amount of non-hidden content of a second portion of said masked anonymized document samples presented for review to said second auditor.
16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein said electronic documents comprise e-mail messages.
17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein said electronic documents are configured from a mark-up language.
18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 , the operations comprising:
continuously delivering said masked anonymized document samples so that over time, an anonymity of each user associated with a masked anonymized document among said masked anonymized document samples is preserved over an entire lifetime of an audit.
19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein said providing is based upon a capacity of each of said one or more auditors.
20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein said structurally-similar electronic documents among said plurality of electronic documents are identified utilizing a hash function tailored to identify similarly structured electronic documents,
wherein said hash function generates at least one message signature for each electronic document of said plurality of electronic documents by:
parsing an electronic document to a Document Object Model (DOM) tree;
pruning the DOM tree to generate a pruned DOM tree comprising textual leaves comprising non-empty alphanumeric strings; and
signing the pruned DOM tree to generate a message signature for the electronic document,
wherein said hash function generates a same message signature for a first electronic document and a second electronic document that have a same DOM structure but different textual leaves.