Image: MICROZOA Getty Images; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (graphic on computer)
In Brief
- Current Web searches, even when anonymized, can still reveal personal information about the user.
- Over a quantum version of the Internet now being developed, search engines could return queries back to the users with the answers—and with the assurance that no one has saved or copied the data.
- Quantum searches will require search engine databases to use a new kind of memory storage, which is already being demonstrated in the laboratory.
Privacy is hard to come by these days, particularly on the Internet, where every time you Google something your desires are recorded for posterity—or at any rate, for advertisers.
Internet search companies say they protect their clients’ privacy by encrypting personal information and by using numbers instead of names to give their users anonymity. The problem is that anonymization is not always effective. AOL user number 4417749 found this out the hard way in 2006 when AOL decided to publish online a list of 20 million Web searches, including hers and those of 657,000 other users. Reporters were able to track down the 62-year-old widow in Lilburn, Ga., by analyzing the content of her searches. Luckily, Thelma Arnold was relatively unembarrassed by the revelation of her identity and intimate interests. How many of us could say the same?
This article was originally published with the title Privacy and the Quantum Internet.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
2 Comments
Add CommentThe government is responsible for developing this technology; the original purpose is for preventing hackers from getting into gov. computers. It has something to do with sending information with a single particle ahead of the signal that is altered when the information is recieved. So in essence the particle acts like a key that can be used once.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTres Void. What a dumb idea! Replacing the classical internet by a quantum one will only cost many trillion of dollars. Only. Besides, there are known classical encryption codes that cannot be broken by a classical or quantum computer, so privacy could be achieved on the classical internet if businesses or the public wanted it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this