{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,28]],"date-time":"2025-09-28T20:34:36Z","timestamp":1759091676086,"version":"3.37.3"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"Wiley","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,3]],"date-time":"2022-02-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1643846400000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100015090","name":"Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100015090","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Security and Communication Networks"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,3]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Web search querying is an inevitable activity of any Internet user. The web search engine (WSE) is the easiest way to search and retrieve data from the Internet. The WSE stores the user\u2019s search queries to retrieve the personalized search result in a form of query log. A user often leaves digital traces and sensitive information in the query log. WSE is known to sell the query log to a third party to generate revenue. However, the release of the query log can compromise the security and privacy of a user. In this work, we propose a Profile Aware ObScure Logging (PaOSLo) Web search privacy-preserving protocol that mitigates the digital traces a user leaves in Web searching. PaOSLo systematically groups users based on profile similarity. The primary objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of the systematic group compared to random grouping. We first computed the similarity between the users\u2019 profiles and then clustered them using the K-mean algorithm to group the users systematically. Unlikability and indistinguishability are the two dimensions in which we have measured the privacy of a user. To compute the impact of systematic grouping on a user\u2019s privacy, we have experimented with and compared the performance of PaOSLo with modern distributed protocols like OSLo and UUP(e). Results show that, at the top degree of the ODP hierarchy, PaOSLo preserved 10% and 3% better profile privacy than the modern distributed protocols mentioned above. In addition, the PaOSLo has less profile exposure for any group size and at each degree of the ODP hierarchy.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1155\/2022\/2109024","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,3]],"date-time":"2022-02-03T18:50:22Z","timestamp":1643914222000},"page":"1-13","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Profile Aware ObScure Logging (PaOSLo): A Web Search Privacy-Preserving Protocol to Mitigate Digital Traces"],"prefix":"10.1155","volume":"2022","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0534-8826","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Mohib","family":"Ullah","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0229-7747","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Rafi Ullah","family":"Khan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Irfan Ullah","family":"Khan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1619-5733","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Nida","family":"Aslam","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SAUDI ARAMCO Cybersecurity Chair, Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8246-4658","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Sumayh S.","family":"Aljameel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Muhammad Inam","family":"Ul Haq","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Bioinformatics, Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7503-5086","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Muhammad Arshad","family":"Islam","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"311","reference":[{"key":"1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3341105.3373947"},{"key":"2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/access.2021.3078431"},{"key":"3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10115-021-01597-x"},{"key":"4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/isre.2018.0833"},{"key":"5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1155\/2021\/6651662"},{"key":"6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1166\/jmihi.2019.2709"},{"key":"7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/access.2020.2977884"},{"key":"8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-29807-3","volume-title":"Advances in K-Means Clustering: A Data Mining Thinking","author":"J. Wu","year":"2012"},{"key":"9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2013.01.001"},{"key":"10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/290163.290168"},{"key":"11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1166\/jmihi.2019.2708"},{"key":"12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.datak.2009.06.004"},{"key":"13","article-title":"Extended combinatorial constructions for peer-to-peer user-private information retrieval","volume":"6","author":"C. M. Swanson","year":"2011","journal-title":"Advances in Mathematics of Communications"},{"key":"14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s12095-015-0125-x"},{"issue":"13-14","key":"15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1541","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comcom.2009.05.009","article-title":"Preserving users privacy in web search engines","volume":"32","author":"J. Castell\u00e1-Roca","year":"2009","journal-title":"Computer Communications"},{"key":"16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2014.03.022"},{"key":"17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.engappai.2016.12.023"},{"first-page":"9","article-title":"Similarity measures for text document clustering","author":"A. Huang","key":"18"},{"key":"19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1155\/2020\/8868686"},{"first-page":"267","article-title":"Incognito: a method for obfuscating web data","author":"R. Masood","key":"20"},{"key":"21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"87393","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2020.2992012","article-title":"A real-time query log protection method for web search engines","volume":"8","author":"D. P\u00e0mies-Estrems","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-14527-8_2"},{"key":"23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1353\/lan.2002.0150"},{"issue":"4","key":"24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"307","DOI":"10.1108\/IJIUS-02-2019-0013","article-title":"Prediction of user interest fluctuation using fuzzy neural networks in web search","volume":"8","author":"N. C. Senthilkumar","year":"2020","journal-title":"International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems"},{"first-page":"1","article-title":"Single-party private web search","author":"A. Viejo","key":"25"},{"first-page":"9","article-title":"Similarity measures for text document clustering","author":"A. Huang","key":"26"},{"key":"27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-09885-2_21"}],"container-title":["Security and Communication Networks"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"http:\/\/downloads.hindawi.com\/journals\/scn\/2022\/2109024.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/downloads.hindawi.com\/journals\/scn\/2022\/2109024.xml","content-type":"application\/xml","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/downloads.hindawi.com\/journals\/scn\/2022\/2109024.pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,10,6]],"date-time":"2022-10-06T15:58:08Z","timestamp":1665071888000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.hindawi.com\/journals\/scn\/2022\/2109024\/"}},"subtitle":[],"editor":[{"given":"Farhan","family":"Ullah","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"editor","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,3]]},"references-count":27,"alternative-id":["2109024","2109024"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1155\/2022\/2109024","relation":{},"ISSN":["1939-0122","1939-0114"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1939-0122"},{"type":"print","value":"1939-0114"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,3]]}}}