Patent ID: 8495065

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining current locations of a plurality of users of a plurality of mobile devices, each of the plurality of users being a user of a corresponding one of the plurality of mobile devices; obtaining user profiles of the plurality of users of the plurality of mobile devices; and processing the current locations and the user profiles of the plurality of users for each of a plurality of successive time intervals to maintain a historical record of anonymized user profile data by location, wherein processing the current locations and the user profiles of the plurality of users for each of the plurality of successive time intervals to maintain the historical record of the anonymized user profile data by location comprises: sorting the plurality of users into location buckets based on their current locations; and for each time interval of the plurality of successive time intervals: for each location bucket, anonymizing the user profiles of ones of the plurality of users in the location bucket for the time interval to provide anonymized user profile data for the location bucket for the time interval; and storing the anonymized user profile data for the location buckets for the time interval.