Patent ID: 8862880

Claim:
A device for processing the anonymizing identifier associated with a user of a network comprising: a network probe; a memory; and a computer processor in communication with the memory, the processor executes a program stored on said memory to perform the steps of: tapping traffic traversing a portion of the network to collect session data; extracting the identifier wherein the identifier is one of mobile station international subscriber directory number (MSISDN), international mobile equipment identity (IMEI), or international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) from the tapped traffic; applying by the network probe a cryptographic hash function Hash-based Message Authentication Code-Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (HMAC-SHA1) at least once to the extracted identifier to generate an anonymized subscriber identifier (ASI); applying twice in succession the HMAC-SHA1 to the MSISDN, IMEI, or IMSI respectively using two separate keys inserting the ASI into the session data; and sending the session data with inserted ASI to a network intelligence solution (NIS); generating random subscriber identifier (RSI) using random generator; enabling the NIS to associate the ASI to a strictly random subscriber identifier (RSI); and storing the associated ASI and RSI in a lookup table.