Patent ID: 8775402

Claim:
A method for collecting responses to a question from multiple query participants, the method comprising: a TQN coordinator initializing a query message to be sent to the query participants, the query message including a question to be answered by the query participants; the TQN coordinator adding obfuscating data to the query message to be used to obfuscate participant answers to the question; the TQN coordinator sending the query message along a randomized path over a network to the query participants; each of the query participants receiving the query message, adding to the obfuscating data of the query message its answer to the question, and sending the query message to a next participant along the randomized path or to the TQN coordinator if the query participant is the last of the participants to respond; the TQN coordinator receiving an obfuscated cumulative result from the query participants that comprises a summation of the obfuscating data and each query participant's answer; and the TQN coordinator removing the obfuscating data from the obfuscated cumulative result to obtain a query result.