Method and system for preserving privacy in an http communication between a client and a server

Abstract

A method preserves privacy in an HTTP communication between a client and a server. The method includes: intercepting an HTTP request that is sent from the client to the server; extracting a cookie from the HTTP request, the cookie including a cookie name and a cookie value; splitting the cookie value into information segments according to a split pattern; and modifying one or more of the information segments based on predefined modification rules. The split pattern for the cookie value is received from a cookie format analyzer. The cookie format analyzer selects the split pattern by: generating multiple lists of data formats based on the cookie name, and selecting one of the lists as the split pattern based on similarity and frequency features associated with the data formats.