A Quest for Harmony between Privacy and Personalization: A User-Centric Approach

我们生活在一个依赖技术工具是不可避免的时代。与此同时，与隐私相关的问题正在以一种我们正处于失去对自己数据控制的临界点的方式出现。的确，很多时候，人们为了获得更好、更快的推荐等各种形式的服务，不惜牺牲个人数据的隐私，分享个人数据和偏好。******监控无处不在！我们从“大哥看着你”变成了“大妈妈看着你”。我们的社会被母爱所呵护；由于它仁慈的母亲，世界已经变成了一个温顺、自愿奴役和透明的状态，导致不可逆转地放弃隐私。******正如蒂姆·伯纳斯-李所说，“如果我们直接控制这些数据并选择何时与谁共享，我们就会失去我们可以实现的好处”。如今，用户可能比以往任何时候都更需要控制自己的个人数据。******在这个研究项目中，我建议在一个包括社交媒体环境的平台上解决电子学习和电子商务固有的隐私和个性化之间的平衡。******我的主要目标是设计和建立一个以用户为中心的整体平台，可以保护个人的在线隐私。与其为他可能使用的每项在线服务使用一套隐私保护系统，我建议使用一种整体工具来帮助他保护自己的数字生活。为此，该工具将使用户能够将其数据保存在本地，并仅在需要时（而且仅在需要时）披露数据。******因此，我将开发一个整体的系统架构和协议，用于构建混合推荐系统，同时采用人口统计，协作和基于内容的过滤，同时保持隐私目标。我将使用信任分割原则和加密工具以及差分隐私来达到隐私和个性化之间的平衡。我建议开发一个基于智能代理的多代理平台，帮助社交媒体用户管理他们的个人数据。******该平台的社交目标是学习用户的隐私行为，以便为他提供个性化的推荐。最终，平台不仅会提高用户的安全意识和对隐私的态度，还会从他和他的同龄人的个人资料中学习，以达到教育和道德的目的。******此外，多智能体平台是“利他的”：它受到基于共同效用的方法的启发，在这种方法中，每个用户都为保护他人的隐私做出贡献，并最终帮助使平台更加智能和可定制。******这个项目最终将在我研究了20多年的三个环境中实现概念验证，即社交媒体，电子学习和电子商务。

We live in an age in which the dependency on technological tools is inescapable. At the same time, privacy-related issues are emerging in a way that we are at the breakpoint of losing control over our own data. Indeed, too often, people jeopardize the privacy of their personal data, sharing their personal data and preferences, in order to obtain various forms of service, such as better and faster recommendations.******Surveillance is everywhere! We switched from “Big brother is watching you” to “Big mother is watching you”. Our society is being mothered; thanks to its benevolent mother the world has become a state of docility, voluntary servitude, and transparency leading to irreversible renouncement of privacy.******As stated by Tim Berners-Lee, “We lose out on the benefits we could realise if we had direct control over this data and chose when and with whom to share it”. Today, more than ever, users may need to keep control over their personal data. ******In this research program, I propose to address the balance between privacy and personalization inherent to e-learning and e-commerce, in a platform that includes a social media environment. ******My main objective is to design and build a user-centric holistic platform that can preserve an individual's privacy online. Instead of using one privacy protection system for each online service he may use, I propose one holistic tool that can help him protect his digital life. To do so, the tool will enable the user to keep his data locally and disclose it only when needed, and furthermore, only what is needed.******Therefore, I shall develop a holistic system architecture and protocol for building hybrid recommender systems that simultaneously employ demographic, collaborative and content-based filtering, all the while maintaining privacy objectives. I shall use the division of trust principle along with cryptographic tools as well as differential privacy to reach a balance between privacy and personalization. I propose to develop a multi-agent platform based on intelligent agents that help social media users manage their personal data.******The social goal of the platform is to learn the privacy behaviour of the user in order to give him personalised recommendations. Ultimately, not only the platform will increase the user's security awareness and attitudes towards privacy, but it will learn from his profile and those of his peers for education and ethics purposes.******Furthermore, the multi-agent platform is “altruistic”: it is inspired by a co-utility-based approach, in which each user contributes in preserving the privacy of others, and eventually helps in making the platform even more intelligent and customizable.******This program will culminate with the realization of a proof-of-concept implementation in three contexts that I have studied for more than 20 years, namely social media, e-learning and e-commerce.