Privacy through lies

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A short sci-fi story by Vernor Vinge, synthetic serendipity, mentions "friends of privacy" which fabricates lies to re-achieve privacy that is violated by web-services *cough*Facebook*cough*. Here is an excerpt.
Doris Nguyen. Former homemaker. Mike eyed the youngish face. She looked almost his mom’s age, even though she was 40 years older. He searched on the name, shed collisions and obvious myths; the Friends of Privacy piled the lies so deep that sometimes it was hard to find the truth. But Doris Nguyen had no special connections in her past.
This privacy through lies idea has been explored somewhat. I have heard of a proposal where a node sends 4 different data to be processed (1 correct and 3 incorrect), so the server cannot learn what is the correct data, and the node can use only the reply to the correct data and discards the other 3 replies. I was wondering if this "privacy through lies" approach can be or is explored further.

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Murat said…
https://plus.google.com/114134834346472219368/posts/8vmpA9fgRMq
April 9, 2012 at 10:53 AM
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