Patent ID: 9736095
Date: 2017-08-15
CPC Classifications: G06F,G06Q,H04L,H04M

Claim:
1. A method comprising: maintaining user profiles for a plurality of users of a social networking system, the user profiles including identifying information about the plurality of users; encrypting a user identifier associated with a user profile of the initiating user of the social networking system; communicating the encrypted user identifier to the third-party communication service; establishing a shadow identifier with a third-party communication service for each of the plurality of users, each shadow identifier masking the identifying information from the corresponding user profile of the user, enabling the user to use the third-party communication service without revealing the identifying information of the user to the third-party communication service; receiving the shadow identifier from the third-party communication service based on the encrypted user identifier; storing the established shadow identifiers in association with the user profiles for the plurality of users; receiving a request from an initiating user of the plurality of users to establish a communication session via the third-party communication service; and establishing the communication session via the third-party communication service using the shadow identifier associated with the initiating user, wherein the third-party communication service cannot access the identifying information of the initiating user from the shadow identifier associated with the initiating user.