Patent ID: 8185931

Claim:
A method for preserving privacy related to networked media consumption activity comprising the steps of: defining one or more source privacy zones; associating a privacy standard with each source privacy zone, including one or more frequency criteria to govern the storage of datasets including information associated with networked media consumption activity collected from the source privacy zone; receiving a transaction request in association with networked media consumption activity including a networking protocol address, from a client device in a source privacy zone over a network at a target location by a networked privacy system; identifying the source privacy zone associated with the client device; using the networking protocol address to access at least one characteristic having at least one characteristic value, thereby creating a dataset including associating the networked media consumption activity with the at least one characteristic having at least one characteristic value; pre-processing the dataset to comply with the privacy standards wherein pre-processing comprises: temporarily storing at least one dataset in a staging database for a time window; and permitting the dataset to be written to a filtered database if the dataset in the staging database meets all the frequency criteria described in the privacy standards within the time window; discarding the networking protocol address; and, storing the pre-processed dataset in the filtered database on a physical storage device at a storage location and coupled to the networked privacy system.