Communications of the ACM
New Crypto Tool Makes Anonymous Surveys Truly Anonymous
Researchers at Cornell Tech have devised a survey service which, they say, makes it mathematically impossible for anyone to identity anonymous survey respondents.
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Cornell Tech security researchers Rafael Pass and Abhi Shelat say it is possible for a survey service or hacker who has access to its servers to reveal links between responses and identifying information. They have built a free survey alternative called Anonize, which they say makes it mathematically impossible for anyone to identify respondents, even with access to Anonize's servers.
Their system allows only a chosen group of respondents to submit answers, and only one response per person.
Respondents download the Anonize app to their smartphone, and the app generates a secret key derived from their email address that will never leave their device. When a survey administrator creates a survey, the Anonize server generates a PGP-style public key derived from the email addresses of all the authorized respondents, who write their answer in the Anonize app and either submit it from the phone or from a desktop by scanning a quick response code. A response string incorporates the survey's public key and changes with every survey to prevent survey creators from matching users between email lists. The string is created using a method of proving a mathematical statement is true without knowing anything else about it, which enables the server to check for proof someone is authorized without learning anything about their identity.
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