Privacy Issues

Traffic traces contain privacy information including network addresses and application payload so that it is important to understand issues involved in user privacy.

There are two major issues involving user privacy.

Removing user data:

User private data must be removed from traces. Traffic traces should have only protocol headers, Protocol payload which contains user data should be removed.

Providing anonymity:

IP address is unique and can be used to identify a user, and thus, addresses should be scrambled to provide anonymity to users.

There are a wide variety of research purposes that have different requirements for traces. No single method will satisfy all the requirements and still keep user privacy. We are trying to provide traces which can be used for a wide range of research. For research which has specific requirements, our traces will provide a starting point, and can be used to narrow down its requirements. Once specific requirements become clear, it is easy to find a specific method to meet the requirements.