Patent attributes
A method and system for aggregating configuration information from friend devices is provided. The aggregation system attempts to foil attacks on the privacy of data contributed to a request by aggregating data from a cluster of friend devices in such a way that it is difficult for a device in the cluster and an attacking device outside the cluster to determine the contribution of an individual device to the data. The aggregation system of an initiator device may also determine the cardinality of a parameter so that the corresponding parameter vector can have a size large enough to support the number of possible values. The aggregation system determines the cardinality by counting nonzero hash values of the actual values that are provided by the devices.
