Private Web Search
Authors: F. Saint-Jean, A. Johnson, D. Boneh, and J. Feigenbaum
Abstract:
Web search is currently a source of growing concern about
personal privacy. It is an essential and central part of most
users’ activity online and therefore one through which a significant
amount of personal information may be revealed. To
help users protect their privacy, we have designed and implemented
Private Web Search (PWS), a usable client-side tool
that minimizes the information that users reveal to a search
engine. Our tool protects users against attacks that involve
active components and timing information, to which more
general Web-browsing privacy tools (including the combination
of FoxTor and Privoxy) are vulnerable. PWS is a
Firefox plugin that functions as an HTTP proxy and as a
client for the Tor anonymity network. It configures Firefox
so that search queries executed from the PWS search
box are routed through the HTTP proxy and Tor client, filtering
potentially sensitive or identifying components of the
request and response.
Reference:
In proceedings of the 6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic
Society (WPES) 2007
Full paper: pdf