Method for privacy protection

1. A method for privacy protection comprising, at an apparatus:

intercepting at least part of network traffic from a client device;

analysing network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;

analysing the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data; and

prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue, randomly selecting tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and replacing, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively,

wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein analysing the network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify any elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process further comprises: identifying the elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process by querying uniform resource locator (URL) reputation from a URL reputation database, wherein the URL reputation database maintains data of tracking URLs.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data comprise any of: a GET field, a cookie, an Etag value, or any predetermined field in the network traffic header.

4. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising maintaining, at a server system, a pool client database of predetermined data pools having tracking field data collected from the set of pool client devices, the predetermined data pools including the data pool,

wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data from the pool client database and replacing the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the retrieved tracking field data respectively.

5. The method according to claim 4 , further comprising receiving the tracking field data from the set of pool client devices and storing the received tracking field data to a corresponding data pool of the pool client database.

6. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:

generating the tracking field data accepted by the website visitor tracking process at a server system; and

populating said generated tracking field data into the data pool,

wherein the randomly selecting includes randomly selecting said generated tracking field data from the data pool, and

wherein the replacing the user specific data includes replacing the user specific data with said generated tracking field data.

7. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:

pre-identifying the structure of the tracking field data accepted by the website visitor tracking process; and

generating the tracking field data accepted by the website visitor tracking process in the event that one or more tracking fields with user specific data are identified, prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue.

8. An apparatus for use in a communications network, the apparatus comprising:

a processor arranged to intercept at least part of network traffic from a client device used in the communications network;

a processor arranged to analyse network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;

a processor arranged to analyse the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data; and

a processor arranged to randomly select tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and to replace, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively, prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue,

wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.

9. The apparatus according to claim 8 , wherein the processor is further arranged to identify the elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process by querying uniform resource locator (URL) reputation from a URL reputation database, wherein the URL reputation database maintains data of tracking URLs.

10. The apparatus according to claim 8 , wherein the one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data comprise any of: a GET field, a cookie, an Etag value, or any predetermined field in the network traffic header.

11. The apparatus according to claim 8 , further comprising a transmitter for sending the tracking field data of the tracking fields comprising user specific data to a pool client database for storing the tracking field data to a corresponding data pool of the pool client database.

12. The apparatus according to claim 8 , wherein at least part of the processors reside in the client device and at least part of the processors reside in a server system, the server system maintaining a pool client database for a set of pool client devices in the communications network.

13. The apparatus according to claim 8 , further comprising a processor maintaining a pool client database of predetermined data pools having tracking field data collected from a set of pool client devices.

14. A computer program product, comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon computer readable code which, when executed by a computer, causes a computer to perform a method comprising:

intercepting at least part of network traffic from a client device;

analysing network traffic data of the intercepted network traffic to identify one or more elements indicative of a website visitor tracking process;

analysing the one or more elements indicative of the website visitor tracking process to identify one or more tracking fields comprising user specific data; and

prior to allowing the intercepted network traffic from the client device to continue, randomly selecting tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data and known to be accepted by the website visitor tracking process and replacing, in the intercepted network traffic from the client device, the user specific data of the one or more tracking fields with the randomly selected tracking field data unrelated to the user specific data respectively,

wherein the randomly selecting includes selecting the tracking field data at random from a data pool.