Profile matching protocol with anonymity enhancing techniques

In this chapter, we introduce a popular research topic, called privacy-preserving profile matching (PPM). The PPM can be very useful in an application scenario where two users both want to know something about each other but they do not want to disclose too much personal information. The PPM occurs quite frequently in our daily lives. For example, in a restaurant or a sports stadium, people like finding their friends and chatting with friendly neighbors. To initialize the communication, they may expect to know if others have similar preferences or share the similar opinions. In a mobile healthcare system, patients may be willing to share personal symptoms with others. However, they expect the listeners to have similar experiences such that they could receive comforts and suggestions. Based on the above application scenarios, we can see that the common design goal of the PPM is to help two users exchange personal information while preserving their privacy. It could serve as the initial communication step of many mobile social networking applications.