Successful search engine optimization (SEO) efforts begin with accurate, timely information about the demographics of a website’s users. Today’s announcement of a new browser encryption protocol could complicate the gathering of that information.
Catalan researchers at Rovira i Virgili University say that they have developed a way for internet users to prevent search engines and websites from collecting personal data about their browsing habits, using sophisticated encryption technology to "distort the profile of users when they use search engines on the internet in such a way that their privacy is preserved," according to an interview with researcher Alexandre Viejo in TG Daily.
Surfers who wish to remain anonymous on the internet already have several methods for doing so, with most centered around the use of proxy servers. But these techniques can slow internet connections to a crawl, while the Catalan team says that its tool provides connections almost as fast as an unprotected one.
Privacy advocates have seen a number of long-wished-for developments in recent days, with the launch of Google’s Dashboard information disclosures and now the announcement of the Catalan team’s browser encryption protocol.
