Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
"Private Web Search.". by F. Saint-Jean, A. Johnson, D. Boneh, and J. Feigenbaum (eds.), 6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, 2007.

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.

Electronic downloads

• http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/jf/WPES07-Felipe.pdf

• HTML

   <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/588.html"
  ><i>Private Web Search.</i></a>, by F.
  Saint-Jean, A. Johnson, D. Boneh, and J. Feigenbaum (eds.),
  6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, 2007.

• Plain text

   "Private Web Search.". by F. Saint-Jean, A.
  Johnson, D. Boneh, and J. Feigenbaum (eds.), 6th ACM
  Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @proceedings{SaintJeanJohnsonBonehFeigenbaum07_PrivateWebSearch,
      title = {Private Web Search.},
      editor = {by F. Saint-Jean, A. Johnson, D. Boneh, and J.
                Feigenbaum},
      organization = {6th ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic
                Society},
      year = {2007},
      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.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/588.html}
  }
  

Posted by Jessica Gamble on 13 Mar 2009.
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