Paper 2017/044

Anonymous contribution of data

Matthew McKague and David Eyers

Abstract

Many application domains depend on the collection of aggregate statistics from a large number of participants. In such situations, often the individual data points are not required. Indeed participants may wish to preserve the privacy of their specific data despite being willing to contribute to the aggregate statistics. We propose a protocol that allows a server to gather aggregate statistics, while providing anonymity to participants. Our protocol is information theoretically secure so that the server gains no information about participants’ data other than what is revealed by the aggregate statistics themselves.