Collection of sensitive data—such as software usage data or other telemetry data—over repeated collection cycles in satisfaction of privacy guarantees

Abstract

A facility for reporting on original values on behalf of each of a plurality of users—each falling within a domain partitioned into a plurality of segments of uniform size—is provided. For each of the plurality of users, the facility (a) randomly selects an upward-rounding window size that is smaller than the segment size; (b) for each source value in a domain, randomly determines a mapping of each segment of the domain to a segment identifier value; (c) determines an original value for the user; (d) adds the upward-rounding window size to the user's original value to obtain a window-augmented original value; (e) identifies a segment containing the window-augmented original value; (f) identifies a segment identifier value mapped-to from the identified segment using the determined mapping; and (g) transmits a reporting communication on the user's behalf reporting a value based on the identified segment identifier value.